Fly Fishing - Spey Rods - A Good Tool.. But Just Another Club In My Bag

gunner · Posted: Wed Nov 15, 2006 11:37 am Post subject: Spey history

For those of you interested in a little spey history, check out this book that you can download in pdf format and read at your own leisure --

"The Spey Cast or Welsh Throw"

found in the updates link at

bcfff.bc.ca/home.htm

flyaddict · Newbie Joined: Oct 13, 2006 Posts: 10

Great find! Thx

jeremy · Posted: Wed Nov 15, 2006 10:10 pm Post subject: gunner

gunner -- great read .... loved it... as i am personally drawn to the scholastic nature of things and typically more concerned with the concepts and theories of things rather than the tools ... the tools (rods, reels, lines, etc...) i see as just a means to an end .. and a distraction many times .. i apply this same "school of thought to my music and technology endeavors" ... who cares what kind of guitar or piano someone buys if they don't understand music theory its all gonna sound like garbage ... and what good is the newest super duper petium processor gonna do ya and a massive hard drive ... if you still don't understand the fundamental concepts of let's say how an operating system works or how bits, bytes, megs and gigs all add up ... or who the heck cares if you got the best super duper 9 gazillion megapixel camera on the market if you still take terrible photos .. and you still have no clue about resolutions dpi and all of the more important stuff ... sorry .. going off on a tangent .. but to me, tools are just a means to an end ..

WITH THAT SAID ... i found it interesting to read about all of the development of the spey casting through the years .. and note that never in the first 33 pages is the ROD discussed much .. the emphasis is ALL on the casts ... i like that .. and also, it was interesting to see that the developers of the casts on both single and double handed rods had a very difficult time describing the casts through words on paper and the diagrams were infact very difficult to get the point across ....... imagine how much easier and how shorter the learning curve would have been for people 100 years ago ... if they had more than just those rudimentary learning tools and reference tools .. imagine if they could have had the learning tools we have today to such as digital video and internet ... so, what interests me, in the end, is seeing how such an old and timeless casting method is becoming popular again and even spanning into uncharted territories on both single and double handed rods .... but in the modern world ... we have an amazing amount of knowledge transfer and information sharing tools at our disposal and that is in stark contrast to the tools they had back in the day .... interesting stuff ... but again, even with all the fancy internet stuff and digital technologies ... the essence of the SPEY CAST remains the same .... cool stuff .. thanks for sharing.