Here's one of my favourite Copperass tube flies not long after it produced a perfect 18lbs Spring salmon for me while working as a professional River Tay ghillie. This pattern of salmon fly is 1 of 2 that I swear by and have built a professional salmon fishing guiding business on the back of.

This perfect 20lbs salmon was caught at the Kindallachan Pool neck on the Lower Kinnaird salmon beat during June while working as a salmon guide. I had my lucky Tweed jacket on that day which has been a magnet for salmon for decades on the Tay. Perfect salmon encounters like this stay in your memory banks for life even though a more accurate account of the capture lives on Youtube! My Tweed jacket and my Ocean chest waders are never too far away when I'm near a salmon river.

Here's professional Scottish salmon guide Jock Monteith our delivering a long fly fishing line across the River Tay near Dunkeld wearing a traditional heavyweight Tweed jacket that hand been handmade by Haggarts of Aberfeldy.

This is my own Monteith salmon fly rod and Van Staal salmon fly reel on the River Tay's Kinnaird beat.

This was myself with a young Glasgow salmon fisher on his first ever salmon fishing trip outing. This big Spring fish weighted 20lbs and was quickly followed by another one of similar proportions. You can see it's a cold damp Spring fishing day but that is often the case when salmon fishing in Scotland during late March.

Salmon Fly Line Design

By Jock Monteith 26th November 2019

If a salmon Spey line is to do its job properly and 'stand the test of time' then far much more thought, care and attention will have gone into prototyping at the 'R & D' stage than you could possibly ever imagine.

For me it was virtually a daily obsession over an 18 month period to make this Spey line design perfect.

This photograph of professional Scottish salmon fishing guide Jock Monteith was captured by TV producer Chris Webster outside Ferry Cottage on the Kinnaird Estate of the River Tay in Perthshire. You can see the snow clad hills and riverbanks in the background.

A Great Salmon Line Design Starts With Professional Passion

A great salmon fly line design starts with huge passion for the sport in general and if there's an 'emotionally empowered' professional ghillie or guide at the route of developments who's on top of their game then that's the very best starting point. Nothing beats time in the 'river classroom' for studying the way fly fishers operate with the fly fishing tackle systems that they've come up to fish with. This 'intel' makes it easier to develop and action a list of key improvements to the fishing & casting performance of a fly line. Personally it still amazes me how it's all about compromise for an angler's inability to learn how to cast or fish properly than it is about presenting your fly onto that 'precise' salmon holding area of the pool with the correct depth and pace.

This lovely tapered salmon Spey line was designed to turn over fast sinking tips with ease where other floating main belly lines would struggle. This line system came with 8 tips to cover all salmon fly fishing applications and was a firm favourite with thousands of UK salmon fishers.

Prototyping Salmon Line Design On The River Tay

For me it started back in 2004 with Airflo's brilliant assistance with 18 months of playing about with various prototype designs while serving as a professional ghillie on the River Tay. My objective at that time was to create a multi tip product which would cover a vast array of fishing conditions and to come up with something better than the highly popular but technically 'non existent' 2ft rear tapered Rio Windcutter 'washing line' which I did and it wasn't long before Rio duplicated my line's 12ft rear taper too! The above Monteith Speycaster Multi System was born and loads of these beautiful Multi tip Spey lines sold without a tackle dealer being involved based of unbeatable fishing performance and good old 'word of mouth'!

I bought this Hardy salmon rod to test its Spey casting ability out on the River Tay and I was instantly also testing its salmon playing action! This beautiful fresh run 10lbs salmon was hooked by me at the tail of the March Pool on the Tay's Kinnaird Beat and it put up a tremendous fight before I got a chance with the landing net. I kept this fine fresh run salmon in the McLean landing net to capture this fine photograph.

The Fly Fishing Tackle Changes

The market shortly thereafter was saturated through the dealer channel with what I perceive to be the biggest 'injustice' against Scottish salmon Spey casting with the birth of the 'shooting head' era. All of a sudden a product was created that a baby chimp could fly across the river even though there were fly control losses along with the total loss of elegance we had all previously been completely consumed with. Beautiful through actioned rods were replaced by stiff butted rods that could flick these short heavy little heads like a brick on a string! Everyone thought this was the best thing ever and especially instructors who couldn't previously get new casters going with a Spey line because they didn't fully understand the easy logic of the Spey cast themselves or lacked effective communication skills.

Here's a fabulous action photograph of Jock Monteith loading up a perfect Spey cast for long range salmon fly delivery across the River Tay with his tweed jacket and chest waders on. This shot was captured on the Meetings Pool of the Lower Kinnaird Beat by top Scottish photographer Louise Bellin.

The Elegance Of Speycasting

There are many important factors that got thrown 'right out of the window' when the shooting head era arrived but the biggest single loss to the thousands of salmon fly anglers that bought into it all was the loss of control of their fly from the moment of touch down as it is impossible to mend a line 'to the fly' with super thin running line and a 'bulky' water dragging head. Talk about clever marketing to design a product that would serve the male ego even if it meant reducing the effectiveness of the fly's true objective. The highly enjoyable casting elegance of a Spey line is important to keep you occupied between salmon hooking opportunities as is learning the easy to understand 'logic' behind the Spey cast starting with a smooth controlled high line lift and the value of opening up the hand ranges and bringing in a silky swing movement to spread out the energy creation so you can transfer all of it to the power stroke.

Here's my own trusted silver friend of 20 years. This is a Van Staal C-vex 9-11 salmon fly reel with the 9/10 spool fitted paired up with the brilliant Monteith 9/10 Speycaster Multi System fly line. These 2 items fished of my bespoke built Bruce & Walker 16ft 9/10 Spey rod is Spey casting perfection and that's my firm professional opinion. As a professional Scottish salmon fishing guide you need to have quality salmon fishing equipment like this fly reel.

Salmon Fly Line Anglers Core Stretch

A salmon fly line core is where a good design should start and unknown to the vast majority of salmon anglers who buy fly fishing products any line that's core stretch is much more than 5% should be put in the bucket. What's the point of learning how to deliver a long Spey line (or any line) and control your salmon fly over a 'taking' fish to then try to set a reasonable sized hook with the normal 10% to 15% core stretch to then apply insufficient hook point pressure (via the 'elastic band' effect) to get a grip of the salmon! A few seasons ago I was contacted by one of the Tay's fantastic salmon fly fishers who was in a state of complete frustration as to why he was continually failing to convert 30 & 40 yard takes with a stretchy core fly line into landed fish until I enlightened him! With most lines you'd get a surprise if you stretched them out and had a colleague at the other end as you both pulled!

The Monteith Speycaster salmon fly line was an amazing multi use product that sold thousand on the riverbanks of Scotland without the dealer channel being involved. This line is still a firm favourite for myself and many other salmon fishers and hopefully we'll be able to have more manufactured in the not too distant future.

The Durability Of A Salmon Spey Line

I've seen many superbly designed single purpose floating Spey lines that one wrong step with a studded wader boot will sheer the soft PVC coating off right down to the lines core rendering the fly line damaged and highly likely 'mentally' unusable. A salmon Spey line simply needs to be made of tough long lasting polyurethane that can handle the knocks and bashes or you're going to be replacing fly lines far too often that become casualties. PVC will degrade with sunlight too whereas polyurethane loves to sunbathe! Even with polyurethane a soft cloth wipe down with a plastic conditioner will amaze you as to how much river grime a line will pick up and will keep you shooting line optimally through the rod rings.

This was such a super salmon line I designed as a professional salmon fly fishing instructor on the River Tay that I'm hopeful to re-produce in the coming years. This full floating main line with 4 x 10ft & 4 x 15ft sinking tips covered all fly fishing depth requirements. You can see me on front of the River Tay's Telford Bridge on the front cover of the fly box.

Note Interest For A Monteith Multi Tip

Make no mistake about it that shooting heads have been a huge commercial sales success however many salmon anglers are starting to understand important components of casting a fly line for salmon like actual enjoyment, effective fly swim control, avoiding a drowned line while playing a fish, running line management, minimising required running line and last but not least good old 'elegant' tradition. In 2020 I'm seriously considering re-running a limited number of these original Monteith Multi Tip Spey lines in both 10/11 & 9/10 with the exact same mainline specification as the 2004 winning formula but this time the line will fish (incorporating 1 of 4 different sink tips) at a 65ft head length. The beautiful 12ft rear taper permits 'more or less' of the head weight to be used depending on cast application & loading requirements unlike the critical 'fixed length' science of a zero rear taper shooting head. This product will RRP at £90 including the 4 x 12ft braided core tips (floater, intermediate, sink 3 & sink 7). If demand is high enough these lines will be produced so please note interest on either of my Facebook pages whether 10/11 or 9/10 and I'll take note from there.