Spey custom sink tips

[Adam Grace]

I have been cutting up and playing with different heavy sink tips for my spey rods for a while. I have used T-14 and LC-13 heads to get as deep as possible without making the casting impossible. LC-13 is popular when fly fishing deep water. LC-13 is dense, thin in diameter and fast sinking but it’s stiff and it kinks. I like T-14 for it's suppleness but the extra grain per foot requires a shorter length in order to maintain a reasonable grain weight. I use heavy heads with both these materials about 20’ long to get down deep. I have also purchased single handed 30’ type 6 shooting heads in large sizes like 11 & 12wt heads so that they weigh a reasonable grain weight once I cut the down to 20-24’. Airflo developed a 20’ high-density series of “custom cut to length” head for spey last year. Those new heads come in 200gr, 330gr and 400gr sizes. Those 20’ heads use a tungsten powder like the T-14 and have a crazy sink rate of 8 ips and faster. Airflo has now introduced a 28’ type 7 shooting head with a nice welded loop in the back. There are many different materials to build custom spey sink tips out there.

What type of custom heads do you use?

[Rick J]

I have been researching as much as I can find on the Skagit method which is more than just a casting technique. This method does not dredge the bottom but rather targets active fish. They generally use very fast sinking tips such as T-14 but short tips, generally no more than 10 feet long and big flies with chain or lead eyes - the idea is to get the fly down to fishing depth fast and keep it there but this fishing depth may only be 2 to 4 feet deep. Rather than a down and across cast I believe they cast more across or slightly up and though they are swinging, they keep as little tension on the line and fly as possible - start with the rod high and lower and follow the fly downstream - the T-14 gets to fishing depth fast but the flies they use are time consumming to tie so they don't want to be bouncing bottom but ride above it and let the fish move to the fly.

So for you guys that want to make your tips as Adam has suggested, you might want to consider some shorter ones from 4 to 10 feet to include in your tip selection. A very rough rule of thumb I heard is that you get around a foot of depth for every 3 feet of T-14 - know this certainly varies with water type and mending techniques