We’ve learned about the “point” and how to avoid the “bloody L” as we learn to spey cast from RIO Products’ Simon Gawesworth. Now, the casting artist has his sights set on angles, targets and how to avoid the dreaded “collision loop.”
As Simon notes, any fly cast—not just a spey cast—has a distinct target. He likens it to shooting a bow, where you have an obvious target and let an arrow fly right at it.
The same is true of the spey cast. If your target is downstream at a 45-degree angle, your line, as craft your D-loop, needs to end up directly behind you before you make your cast—not upstream of you or downstream of you. With your fly line aligned with your target, you’ll make a better cast. If your fly line is off, even just a bit, you put yourself at risk of having your line hit your fly rod on the forward cast.
That, of course, is the collision loop. Watch as Simon performs the cast, both correctly and incorrectly, in the video above.