Review: Single Handed Spey Casting by Simon Gawesworth

Simon Gawesworth’s latest release as of now (January 2010) is focussed on single handed spey casting as the title “Single Handed Spey Casting” may suggest! The books opens with a brief introduction of basic fly casting mechanics before moving onto the foundations of spey casting and then into the more advanced casts themselves. The book is split into 6 main sections where groups of different casts are detailed.

On the front cover, the subtitle is “Solutions to: casts, obstructions, tight spots and other casting challenges of real-life fishing” and it certainly lives up to what it suggests. Unlike other casting books not only does Simon Gawesworth detail the casts very well, he goes to a lot of effort to explain exactly where such a cast could be useful or when it should be used etc. It really does help pad out your knowledge and hopefully ability in how to get to those ‘impossible’ fish!

Throughout this book there are excellent high quality photographs clearly displaying body movements, rod movements, anchor position, line movements etc. The photograph quality is the best I’ve seen of any casting book. Simon Gawesworth being a fantastic caster himself not only brings the standard “how-to” but passes on many great tips that he’s picked up through his own experience. It’s amazing how much easier his tips can make certain aspects of your cast.

To give an idea of the kind of casts covered from start to finish in this book, in the “Problems Behind” section the casts demonstrated and taught are: The roll cast, double roll cast, switch cast, single spey, double spey, snake roll, snap t and the dry fly spey. As you can see a very extensive list and this is only one section! The teaching advice in the book is really excellent and it is probably as good as you will get teaching wise without seeing an instructor.

This book is a definite 10/10 in my opinion and if you have any interest in single handed spey casting at all whether to improve or learn from scratch then this book is just what you are looking for! I hope you enjoy it as much as I have.