Casting Technique Spotlight: The White Mouse

Unleashing the two-hander on the upper Skykomish River.

Casting nerd alert!
This post gets a little technical so bear with us.

Spey casts fall into two main families: touch-and-go and water-loaded casts. Touch-and-go (aka splash and go, aka airborne anchor) casts land your anchor on the water like a plane landing on a tarmac, and they demand precise timing to form a D-loop and load the rod. When we're thinking about these casts such as the single spey, reverse single, and snake roll, it's important to note that these are primarily summer and fall techniques with floating lines, light tips and smaller flies.

However, when prepping for upcoming winter and spring steelhead trips, you can bet we're practicing our water-loaded casts! They use the pull of the line on the water to load up your rod and launch your fly, a technique very well suited to the cooler months of the year. Skagit-style shooting heads are designed to excel at this type of casting, and they’re the main family of techniques that you’ll use to present flies to sea-run fish in the high, cold flows of winter and spring.

The best tip we give when our clients and customers are running into trouble with their spey casts is common prescription: “SLOW DOWN”.  Skagit-style casts, when properly executed, are very slow compared to your single-handed stroke and even the touch-and-go casts of summertime. But how fast are you supposed to go when you “slow down”?

Instructor and guide Ben Waldschmidt demonstrates the White Mouse.

With Skagit style casting. one of the best indicators you’re executing a proper sweep and set-up of your D-loop is the aforementioned White Mouse. It’s the little rooster-tail of spray that appears at the point where your line is peeling off the water. Once you have the basics down, it’s a good thing to start paying attention to because it makes you conscious of how fast you are executing the rod-loading stages of a circle spey, snap-T or double spey. Sweep too fast and the line blasts off the water and no “Mouse” is formed. Too slowly and the little spray of water doesn’t form. What you’re looking for is what’s in the picture, just a little spray that follows the point where your line peels off the water.

For more information on the “White Mouse”, water-loaded casts (aka sustained anchor aka waterborne anchors) and getting the most out of your spey casting technique, come hang with us on the Skykomish river for our monthly free spey casting clinics. More info on how to sign up, here. Spey on!

Airflo Compact Intermediate Spey Lines

Airflo Skagit Compact Intermediate Head:  $54.99, 450-720 grains

After fishing the Airflo Skagit Compact Intermediate Head this spring, all we can say is “Whoa!”  At first fishing the head in steady, even currents it was tough to notice a big difference how this line presented the fly, compared to its floating cousins.  Yes, it turned over big winter steelhead bugs with ease and grace, but so do the floating heads.  Then we saw it…the intermediate head really helped to slow the fly down as it swung across the run.

The next test was to fish the head through runs that had uneven, mixed currents (You know, those runs you know hold fish, but are a pain to get a nice even swing through).  As advertised, this head pulled the fly through the run at the perfect speed, just leaving us on edge waiting for a steelhead to pounce on our fly.  Loop it on and let ‘er rip!!

We've got 'em at the shop, stop in and get an edge for fishing the Peninsula in April through the high-water runoff that will likely last through June at a minimum.