WHITE CITY — With the soft swirls of a conductor, Steve Godshall's two hands direct his immense fly rod through dips and pirouettes with an ease and grace not often seen in the steelhead fly-fishing world.
This precision looping and whirling of his 13-foot spey rod then powers a tiny fly 80 feet over the Rogue River before it rests atop a riffle in hopes of enticing a summer steelhead to lunch.
No muscling of line forward and backward like the one-handed casting Montanans in "A River Runs Through It." Instead, it's an artful two-handed roll cast resurrected from 19th century British royals who used it to catch Atlantic salmon without getting their kilts bunched up.
"This is, by far, the easiest way to cover a lot of water for fish," says Godshall, 58, of Medford. "Once you learn the rhythm, this is very easy and very graceful."
This is the two-handed casting world of the spey, and you one-handers better get used to it because this old-style form of fly-fishing is the new rage among Northwest steelheaders looking to cover more water and catch more fish.
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Four or more feet longer than conventional fly rods and rimmed with cork for two hands, the rods allow for long, simple casts where there's a premium on distance and a dearth of back-casting space.
Plucked from obscurity in the 1980s, the old rods are finding new acceptance among steelhead anglers working the Northwest's wide, swift rivers.
"It was a novelty that has exploded just the past four years," says Gary Anderson, a veteran custom fly-rod builder in Gold Hill.
Customers asked Anderson to make less than a half-dozen of these rods, which were first crafted two centuries ago for fishing the wide River Spey in Scotland.
So far this year, Anderson has built 231 rods — 146 of them spey rods. Five years ago, he built one model. Now, he carries 18 models for everything from steelhead and salmon fishing to dry-fly trout fishing.
The long rods provide better control because more line is off the water. The two-handed cast is less mechanical than the typical cast in which one hand manipulates the rod and one guides the line.
"What's really important is that the line matches the rod," Anderson says. "You put the right line on it, these rods come alive."
The merits of spey rods rests in fly-fishing lore. They were commonplace in Europe throughout the late 19th and 20th centuries — it's a favorite of Prince Charles — and steelhead anglers dabbled with them pre-World War II in the Pacific Northwest and British Columbia.
Rudyard Kipling swung one during a trip to Oregon's Clackamas River in 1889, and speys enjoyed one-time distinction of being the universally accepted rod for steelhead on a fly.
But anglers began shifting to shorter, one-handed rods in the early 20th Century, in part because the longer rods increasingly became seem as unsporting.
But outdoors writers like Bill McMillan in Washington began singing the praises of two-handed rods in the 1980s as prime for steelhead fishing the Northwest's big, tough-to-wade steelhead rivers.
Since then, anglers continue to plunk down $200 to $1,000 or more for the rods and they have become a regular site on rivers like the Rogue and North Umpqua, where brushy riparian zones make spey rods a no-brainer.
Single-handed rods that rely on conventional back-casting — the linear back-and-forth motion that generates line speed and casting length — can't match the centrifugal power generated by the aerial loops and snaps of a spey roll cast.
"Two-handed rods are ideal for steelhead," says Godshall, a part-time guide and full-time spey caster. "Casting all day, it's a lot easier on the muscles. I don't have the sore elbows.
"Besides, spey is fun," he says.
To spey or not to spey is not a difficult question for Marty Phillips, whose current venture into spey casting is borne partly from need, partly curiosity.
The Shady Cove woman, who helps run fly-fishing clinics for breast cancer survivors, has moved recently to a riverside home on the Rogue seemingly built for spey casting.
The long, rather wide riffle is often rife with steelhead, but it's tough to wade and bushes afford no back-casting room. The riffle is fished effectively from anglers in drift boats, but Phillips can't muscle a cast to the steelhead there from the bank.
She bought a used spey rod and is taking classes to learn the intricate motions.
"It's an interesting thing to do, a little different than the one-handed rod," Phillips says. "Besides, I have the perfect spot for it right out my back door."
While Phillips is dabbling in spey, she's not ready for a complete conversion.
"I wouldn't give up my other rods," Phillips says. "There's a time for everything."
Most fly-fishers appear to agree.
Though growing exponentially, spey-rodders are still a small niche within the fly-fishing niche.
"Anderson believes spey rods will eventually peak and sales will slide. Until then, Godshall will sing the praises of two hands being better than one for Northwest steelhead devotees.
"I think 10 percent of the fly-rodders are going two-handed now," Godshall says. "It's a small percentage, and it's growing nicely."
