George Cook - Spey Day on the Sandy River

Spey Day: Opportunity to cast an entire series of Sage and Redington rods!

Once a year and always seemingly the wettest day possible, George Cook (Northwest Representative for Sage, Redington and Rio) organizes a one day event set aside just for dealers to come and cast the entire arsenal of two hand equipment. Sort of a mini spey clave. The idea evolves around getting the rods in the hands of the guys that actually sell the equipment and taking them for a test drive. It also allows us to test the different lines available from Rio.

Sage One 7136-4 Spey Review

I wanted to see if all the hype surrounding the Sage One Spey was true so I picked up a 7136-4 One Spey from the shop and headed down to the Hood for an afternoon of casting and well, I guess I fished a bit too. Nobody home on the fish front, but I did learn plenty about Sage’s latest contribution to the Spey world.

I brought a bunch of lines with me. No mid speys or long bellies – mainly just Skagit and Scandi lines and a few shorter lines of the switch variety. I started out by lining up an Airflo 510 Skagit Compact with a 10 foot T-14 Sink Tip (Rio MOW Heavy), which felt just about perfect. Then I tried the 540 Airflo Compact which was too heavy for my liking. Then I moved over to the Scandi Lines… I tried a 480 Rio Steelhead Scandi as well as the Airflo 480 Scandi Compact. I like both lines equally well, however, they both felt too heavy for the 7136-4. As I have voiced in the past, I think one of the many benefits of the Scandi over the Skagit is the ability to lighten up and feel more agile while casting. To me these two 480 grain lines were very noticeably heavy.