Half my trout fishing these days is done with a two-handed rod, and I'm not the only one. On a recent episode of the Fly Fishing Insider Podcast, I sat down with Kevin Sloan of Skwala Fishing, a guy who's spent time at Orvis, helped build Sitka, and now designs technical wader and layering gear for a living. Kevin's true love, though, is swinging flies for trout on a trout spey rod, and he walked me through why it's caught on, how to build a quiver that actually covers your water, and one gear-care habit almost nobody does that will make everything you own perform better.

Why Swing Flies for Trout in the First Place

Kevin calls trout spey "scaled-down steelheading," and once you fish it that way it clicks. Instead of blind-casting a nymph rig or hunting risers, you're covering water methodically with a two-hander, feeling the take instead of watching for it. He's been casting a spey rod since 1990 and still says every cast feels like a different puzzle, which is exactly why it keeps him engaged after thirty years. The other draw is efficiency: a two-handed rod lets you make one clean, minimal-false-cast presentation after another without stripping in and re-casting, so you spend more of your day with a fly actually in the strike zone.

Building a Three-Rod Trout Spey Quiver

Kevin runs three rods depending on the run: a two-weight with a Scandi-style line for swinging small soft hackles, a three-weight with a classic trout spey line (he specifically mentioned the Rio Trout Spey) for general swinging, and a four-weight with a short, heavy shooting head for throwing sizable streamers. On colder, deeper water he'll step up to a full sink-tip, sometimes a 12.5-foot T-8. If you're brand new to two-handed casting, his advice is blunt and useful: find George Cook or Simon Gawesworth's instructional videos, or better yet hire a guide for a day or two, because anchor placement and setup are different enough from single-hand casting that a little coaching saves you a season of frustration. He also pointed out that once you learn a proper spey anchor, you can borrow the technique for a single-hand rod, turning what feels like a limited roll cast into a cast that shoots real distance with no backcast at all — a huge advantage on brushy small streams.

The Step-and-Swing Method

Here's the part that actually changes how you fish a run: cast quartering downstream, let the fly swing all the way across and straight below you, then take a step (or two, in clearer water with aggressive fish) before your next cast. The key is casting the same amount of line every time — if you strip out fifty feet, keep fishing fifty feet as you move down the run, so each swing covers new water instead of overlapping the last one. Kevin varies the retrieve constantly: some days trout want a smooth, steady swing, other days a bouncing rod tip or short strips trigger the grab. He and his teenage son alternated retrieves one afternoon and found eleven of fifteen fish ate on a fly with movement added, not a dead swing. At the end of every drift, he does a slow lift-pause-lift three times before recasting, which accounts for more strikes than you'd expect.

One Fly, Endless Confidence

Kevin estimates he fishes a single pattern, a "Thin Mint" tied spey-style on a tube in olive-black-brown, about 80 percent of the time. His logic: presentation and depth matter far more than fly selection, so he'd rather master getting one fly in front of fish correctly than carry twenty patterns he half-trusts. When the hatch calls for it (he mentioned the Mother's Day caddis emergence) he'll switch down to a simple soft hackle and swing it through riffles — proof that "old" techniques like wet-fly swinging still out-fish modern nymph rigs on the right day.

Wash Your Waders

Kevin's day job is building technical wader and layering gear, so his gear-care tip carries real weight: wash your waders. Dirt, sweat, and grime clog the pores of breathable fabric, so a filthy pair of waders isn't just gross, it's actually not breathing anymore. Wash them roughly every ten days of use, inside out, on a gentle cycle in a front-loader (or by hand in a tub if you only have a top-loader), using a technical wash like Nikwax or Grangers instead of regular detergent, and never use liquid fabric softener. Hang dry, then re-treat with a DWR spray once they're clean. It's a fifteen-minute habit that adds years to an investment most of us take for granted.

Gear

If you're wet-wading through spring runoff or stepping into cold tailwaters for a full day of swinging, a breathable chest wader you're actually willing to keep clean makes the whole system work — the STONEFLY Breathable Fishing Chest Waders are a solid, affordable option built for exactly this. And if you want more of this kind of practical, no-fluff technique breakdown to keep in your back pocket, grab our Tips and Tricks for Fly Fishing eBook.