150 years or so ago, a technique using long wooden rods and longer lines was born on a river in Northeastern Scotland. Spey casting was developed to overcome the challenges of fishing a wide deep river with strong currents. The second challenge to the Spey River was that it was lined with trees making traditional fly fishing difficult.
Spey casting followed it's Atlantic Salmon fishermen across the big pond and landed on the great salmon rivers located on the East Coast of the New World. The same techniques used to swing flies for Atlantic Salmon in the British Isles worked here as well and Spey fishing remained relatively unchanged.
As steelhead fishing began to explode on the west coast in the 70's and 80's Atlantic Salmon techniques were tweaked to catch migratory game fish from California to Alaska, the spey rod and it's casts slowly infiltrated the culture.
West Coast steelhead junkies began to run into issues that were unique to their rivers, climate, and the habits of the fish they pursued. No longer would a floating line and un-weighted fly be sufficient enough to consistently catch west coast fish consistently. Fly fishermen of the west coast had developed sinking line systems, designed larger, heavy flies designed to elicit strikes from the migratory species found in their often flooded, off-color rivers. The search for a way to merge the two technologies was underway.
The basic principles to spey casting still hold true. The ability to cast long lines with little to no back cast is still at the core even as techniques and applications have evolved twisting and blurring the boundaries.
In fact, all along the spey rod's journey, techniques, lines, and even the definition of "Spey" has evolved into terms like Skagit, Scandi, European actions, and traditional techniques all "Tweaked" in the basements and garages of fish chaser the world over.
In this new millennium, spey rods continue to break new boundaries finding applications all over the world and in many different fisheries. No longer contained to migratory anadromous fish, the two-handers are being molded into trout, warm water and even saltwater applications.
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A Short History Of Spey Fishing
