Spey Clinic Part II - Heads and Tips

11/11/09

When we last left off I had mentioned that I'd get back to the "Rio Versileaders". The Versileaders are mini heads that extend from the main body of the "Scandi" or "Skagit" heads. They have a butt section of monofiliment that you can then extend with additional tippet to your fly or flies.

The Rio Spey Versileaders come in 6 ft (1.8 m), 10 ft (3 m) and 15 ft (4.5 m) leaders with a high tenacity nylon core. VersiLeaders feature an ultra smooth welded loop in the butt end making it easy to connect to the fly line.

Ryan Miller pointed out that Rio sells a wallet with either 10 foot or 15 foot Versileaders that cover sink rates from 1.5 ips Inches per second) to 7.0 ips. If you purchase that you are pretty much good to go with any of your integrated, scandi or skagit heads. Just pick which rate (ips) you want, add it to your integrated line or head and you're fishin'. He also pointed out that with a Sage Z-axis 11 ft. 6 weight switch used with my Altlantic Salmon and Steelhead line that I'd want to stay on the heaveier end of the spectrum, probably an 5.6 ips or a 7.0 ips. on the Lower Yuba which is my home river.

T-11 and T-14 Heads.


Ok, where are we going now. Remember in the last post we talked about adding sink tips to a Scandi or Skagit Head. Well a practical way to do this is to use lead core line. The differnt weights of lead core are designated by "T" which = grains per foot. So that means if you take a piece of T-11 lead core line and make a head that is 10 foot long. You have 10 feet times 11 grains per foot which equals a head that is 110 grains. Another good tip from Ryan is to purchase a Rio package of T-11 or T-14 lead core which is 30 foot long and cut in into 3 heads of 8 foot, 10 foot and twelve foot. You just add braided loop to loop connectors and you are ready to go.

I called Kiene's Fly Shop before I headed down to Sacramento and asked then to make me up 3 heads as described above. When I got there the 3 heads where sitting on the counter with the braided loops installed and just had to pay for them and head on out the door. Pretty cool. I never was very good at using those braided loop connectors.

Well that's it for now.

Keep the tip up.

Clay