Time to Start Getting Ready for Fall and Winter Steelhead

Well it's that time of year again when the summer temps are hot as blue blazes and I have cold water and dancing steelhead on the mind.  What's a better cure for the summer duldrums then tying flies and re-stocking the fly boxes......as well as getting new line for the spey rod!!

Lateley I have been tying some feather wing spey flies such as the Compactor Spey (named after the Compactor hole on the Salmon River) and some Mahogans which are one of Dec Hogan's patterns that works very well on the Great Lakes Steelhead Rivers.  I typically tie these on Daiichi size 1.5 Alec Jackson Hooks, but they can be tied on size 3 and size 5 as well.  These patterns can be tied tubes and shanks too!!

I also had some leftover Gamakatsu Hooks in size 4 colored red and size 6 colored green, so I decided to play around with some small soft hackle style flies in various colors to have something a little smaller to swing in low water or in the slow water.

As far as the line I just recieved, it is the Snake River's Ballistic Vector XL series in 8/9 wt which has a belly length of 65'-0", a total line length of 125'-0", and weighs 660 grains.  I chose this spey line since I had been using the CND Gravity Point spey line which has a 70'-0" belly and weighed 671 grains.  As you can see the specs are very close so I think this will be a good match for my rod when either fishing dryline or using polyleaders.