Hi RT: He he! I enjoyed your black vision of speyfishing,and I know you arnt predjudiced about flyfishing or even about spey casting. In fact I think that if you descided you wanted to take up the gentle art you would be amongst the best.
Spey casting is a little like learning to ride a bike ,if you start when your a kid you never really forget even if you occasionally fall off when crossing a creek as I do.
I started with my grandfathers 3 pc greenheart as a kid .It used to hang on nails on the summer cottage verandah. Those old greenhearts had no furrels and used carved splices to joint the rod and were taped to hold it in place.
Like you I am somwhat annoyed by the fervour with whitch North Americans have taken up Spey casting. It has become "the thing" in fly fishing. Unfortunately they have chosen to ignore the ancient concepts of the sport and try to invent some new gimicks . Most of them including their gurus dont know their asses from a tin
teabucket.
I was amused by the antics of one Jim Green who used to be a rod demonstrator /designer for
Fenwick. He watched my Scots buddy spey casting with a rhube goldberg spey caster we had fashioned from bits and pieces of Loomis blanks because fifteen years ago there were no spey caster graphite blanks available over here.He descided that this was something new and exciting so he set to work to build some speycaster rods. He dident consult my buddy who was a former spey casting champion of Scotland ;he just flew by the seat of his pants. The rods were awful. Then he went to Scotland and came across an ancient reverse taper butt greenheart rod and descided this was the way to go. He built some in grahite and they were abominations.
Thats how it goes these afficianados fart around and prance and posture without knowing any more about spey fishing than they do about horsehockey.
I dont blame you for being somewhat pissed off.
coot