Do I Need A Skagit?

Our first day out last Spring started innocently enough. We arrived at a slightly high river, with cold water demanding. Okay, cold water didn’t demand anything – but the Ghillie did! That we fish a fairly big fly, well down in the water, and slowly.

Most of us had an outfit to cover that. Either a RIO VersiTip line or 3D/Triple D head? A full Intermediate line or head? One of the group opted for his trusty floating line equipped with a sinking Polyleader. That choice raised a frown from our Ghillie, but it seemed to still offer a fair chance of success. “Mending the fly down and fishing it slowly was the key” we heard.

The second pool was more challenging to fish. Even from my preferred left-hand bank, which lets me cast ‘right hand up’ most of the time. A deeper wade and slow water made dealing with sink tips harder. Especially towards the best holding spot which came with a choice of either casting from a steep rocky bank, or deep wading to gain almost enough room for a D loop. We saw fish show in that lie through the afternoon but I’m not sure that any of us covered them very well. The ‘squarish cast’ needed to get the fly down and fishing in time brought the D loop back towards rocks – and things started to suffer. A few failed casts where the line caught up, or sometimes it unrolled lazily onto the water and I had to pull some back immediately to regain tension.

The tail of the pool had to be fished from the bank. A longer cast at a narrower angle made sense. The pace of water had picked up, and that seemed to help slow down the swing of the fly – swimming provocatively, behind my ’T-tip’ An ultra-fast sink tip for just those conditions. Sadly the wind had also picked up by that point, blowing straight downstream. I like the Double Spey but, standing on the bank and aiming at 45 degrees there was almost no D loop and so not much energy in the forward cast. Sometimes, the wind kindly took hold of the slow-moving line and laid it pretty much back where I’d just lifted it from!