Yesterday I was experimenting with some different rod/line combinations and put a Rage Compact on a 13ft. TFO. It cast well but the last few feet of flyline got into a squiggle just before it hit the water. Tried altering my stroke and timing but the squiggles remained. Any ideas?

Squiggle? Meaning it hit full extension and snapped back?

I get those, too; especially when casting compact heads without sink tips. The good news is that it's a sign you're getting good acceleration throughout your casting stroke. When your cast extends fully before it his the water, the force of the abrupt stop can cause your line to recoil slightly (or kind of a lot, depending). The less inertia your line is carrying (often less weight from sink tips, etc.), the more pronounced the effects tend to be. Slowing down your casting pace can reduce the force with which your line pulls when it is fully extended, but if you're doing things right, you're probably moving pretty slowly already.

Unless you're trying to get a fast-starting greased line or skating presentation, those squiggles can be a good thing; they give you some slack for your upstream mend, which makes it easier to mend without moving your fly a lot. If you happen to be using a dead drift presentation (the horror!), those squiggles give you a lot of extra dead drift before your line needs to be mended to avoid drag.

I have little experience casting traditional Spey lines, but what experience I do have with them suggests they are a better tool for delivering unweighted presentations at varying distances. Compact heads, the way I understand them, are designed to fully load a rod with a shorter length of line on the water so big, heavy, ugly bugs and sink tips can be delivered greater distances with a shorter casting stroke that doesn't require much back cast room. I've always felt pretty okay about ugly casts, so long as they get my gear where a fish might see it, so I guess I hadn't thought much about the squiggles when they occur.

I gather from your other posts, featuring some nice, swanky gear, that you are a man who appreciates the aesthetics of Spey casting a good deal. If that's true, I can imagine why you would like to do away with the squiggles. If you get it figured out, let me know... God knows my Spey casting has plenty of room for improvement.

When the Rage heads were first introduced I purchased and worked with all of them, in the entire range of of grain weights availible, for about a year. The only ones that didn't "squiggle" at the end of the cast were those under 450 grains, when used in conjunction with SFS poly leaders and unweighted, or lightly weighted flies.

I came to the conclusion that in the heavier grain weights (extra belly length), the added weight in the rear didn't pair well with the front taper length and final tip diameter? I intended to chop off a couple of feet from the front of the 480 or 510 to see if it would remove the squiggle effect, but ended up selling them all before I got around to it.

In looking for replacements I cast a few other scandi and hybrid type short heads, settling on Buelah Elixr's. No squiggle was what I was after, regardless of whether or not the fly was still fishing at the end of the cast. (Nexcast WA's are also smooth casting.)

Try a 10'-13' SFS poly leader or type 3 Delta tip on your Rage and see if either one helps. Good luck in straightening out the squiggles.

One thing great casters have the ability to do (not me), is cast their line low to the water so that it doesn't have much time to retract. I'm not there yet. I just get the feel of my line weight with a couple of switch casts and adjust the power of my forward cast to match. As I strip out more line to shoot, I test cast a couple more times to get my power to where it needs to be.

Takes a little time, but it works.

Joe warned me about the rage 510 but I got it anyways... It's a great line but it does land awkward sometimes even with polyleaders. I still like the line though. I've almost got it figured out and usually only get the quirly q's once out of 7-8 casts. Polyleaders are absolutely needed though or it'll do it dam near everytime. I've been using the intermediate polyleader even when using top water skaters/poppers. Works great.