Ever Have This Happen To You?

[BigKahuna]

I was on the Lower Yuba with a group of spey fishers doing a spey casting re-fresher and a friend was rigging up and putting a shooting head on. Another buddy said to him. "Hey you've got your head on backwards". He said, "I just put it on the way Clay told me to, the Printed ID goes to the shooting line". My buddy said, "Well that's true if its a Rio head, but wrong if its an Airflo head". The moral of this story is just that.

When using Rio Shooting Heads the Printed ID goes to the running line.

When using Airflo Shooting Heads the Printed ID goes to the front end just, the opposite.

Questions of the moment is, why are they opposite of each other? Who know?

My thought is that when you have taken off a head and are going to then put in back on later, Rio's idea is that you want to see the grain weight on the end you are going to attach. Just my theory. Makes sense to me anyway.

When you have a line strung up on your reel, Airflo's idea is that you can see what grain weight the line is, Again my theory, that also makes some sense.

I attended a Rio/Sage Spey Day hosted by their rep Jaime Lyle, a few weeks ago and he mentioned it is a common mistake that he sees happen all the time. If your head is on backwards it's just not going to fly right.

What do you think? Ever happen to you?

For an article on this topic and more spey stuff you can check it out at http://www.flyfishingtraditions.blogspot.com


Big Kahuna

[briansII]

I've done it more than a few times.

Scientific Angler heads come with arrows to point you in the right direction. I have heads with no printed info, so I have to go by the taper.

briansII

[JasonB]

Yep, I've done that. I have to say that the ID on the leader end makes way more sense to me, as I can see it any time I wish (on or off the spool). With the ID connected to the backing I can't see it serving any use to me other than when it's coiled up off the reel, in which case I could easily read the ID from either end... makes no sense to me. Gets downright confusing when you have both Rio and Airflo heads.
JB

[troutless]

If your head is on backwards it's just not going to fly right

All these years of speycasting and FINALLY somebody points out what I'm doing wrong.