Last August we booked a Spey casting lesson with a local TFF instructor, but it was canceled because of Hurricane Harvey. Meanwhile our friend Mark Marmon said that he’d learned to Spey cast for Salmon in Iceland and that he’d give us a lesson. We had to have a lesson because when we go to Oregon we have to Spey cast, it’s like a law or something, and we don’t want to break any laws. Everything else is legal in Oregon, but they’re serious about Spey casting.
That’s Mark in the photo above. I stole that photo off his website, so he can sue if he wants. I’m not certain but it doesn’t look like the photo was taken in Houston. He’s sans pony-tail these days, but I always liked that photo of Mark. I don’t know if he lost the pony-tail when he became an Episcopal priest, but it’s a better story that way, sort of an Episcopalian version of God’s Wrath.
I knew Mark first through local fly shops, Angler’s Edge I think but it’s been a long time. Mark chose and sold Kris one of my favorite Christmas presents ever: a 5-weight Winston matched to an Abel click-and-pawl reel. About the time Kris bought that rod I ran into our friend Shelley. I’d known Shelley since law school, and Kris and Shelley were even better friends than Shelley and me. Shelley said she had taken up fly fishing and that also oh-by-the-way she and Mark were getting married. Houston is a big city, and the chance that Shelley would know Mark, much less marry him, was pretty remote. I figured whether they knew it or not we were the common thread. They might see it differently, but I’m a firm believer that coincidences never happen, except by accident.
There were entire years when you couldn’t open a Houston Chronicle on any given day without reading a story about Mark. Every other guide in Houston (and that was pretty much Chris Phillips) was obsessed with saltwater, but Mark fished fresh. He fly fished the inner city bayous, and the Chronicle couldn’t get enough of it. Still can’t. Mark fished in the bayous mostly for grass carp, but he was also fishing for trout on the Guadalupe and for local bass: Mark introduced us to Damon’s Seven Lakes. Mark says his largest grass carp out of Braes Bayou was 48 pounds, which would be a state all-tackle record. Braes Bayou is less than a mile from our house. He had found big fun fish that he could sight cast to, even if the fishery was decorated with abandoned grocery carts.
Mark met us at Meyer Park Duck Pond to teach us what he could on stillwater about Spey casting, and it turned out that it’s the place to be on a Sunday evening. Stacy was there from Bayou City Anglers giving casting lessons to a family. Gretchen from Orvis (who ties the best doubled Bimini twists I’ve ever seen) showed up to meet Stacy and go for Margaritas and Tex-Mex. I’m pretty sure they looked at us and the Spey rods and laughed and laughed and laughed.
It was nice of Mark to give us the lesson, but Mark is a really nice guy. I once mentioned to Mark that my second-ever fly rod was a Shakespeare Wonderod that my mother bought when I was 14 with S&H Green Stamps, and that while I had the Pflueger Medalist reel I’d long ago lost the rod and wished I still had it. The next week Mark brought me a circa 1970s fiberglass Shakespeare Wonderod. I’ve fished with it some too. It’s heavy as a horse and casts like a slug, but it’s great fun in small doses, as most memories are. My 12-weight is lighter than that Shakespeare. Modern spey rods are lighter than that Shakespeare.
Mark’s only flaw, really, is that he doesn’t like the Beatles. Personally I think he’s enjoying some mild perversity, which after all I know a good bit about. I’m the one learning how to Spey cast.
When we went to the pond, Mark had three Spey rods of various weights, two Thomas & Thomas and one Echo. Mark also had some great second-hand reels for his rods that he’d apparently found the same place that he’d found that Shakespeare Wonderod. We fooled around for a while, and I got to where I could do a roll cast that didn’t always end in a puddle 30 feet out. The rods were heavier than I expected, in part because of the need for a heavy reel to balance the rod, plus the surprisingly heavy lines. They were also really, really long. They’re magnitudes longer than 9-foot rods, nearly half again as long. Kris of course was a natural, though Mark was giving her workout advice for upper body strength by the end of the lesson. I offered to loan her my Shakespeare Wonderod.
Mark pointed out that you could in fact overhand cast with Spey rods, just like you would normally cast a single-handed rod. Since that lesson it’s been easy for me to shoot 100-feet of line casting overhand, though where it lands is not real precise. They never tell you about overhand casting in the online videos, but that’s because overhand casts are also illegal in Oregon. They’re serious about Spey casting.
Mark asked what rods we were going to use in Oregon, and I said that the outfitter had rods. He said that was smart and did I want to borrow his to practice with? I said maybe.
The next day I went rod shopping. This has nothing to do with smart.
