Jim Rusher's Spey School- a Review

FFN Currents & Eddies

Jim Rusher's Spey School

a Review

"We failed, didn't pass. Got left back, and have to repeat the course."
This from two 70 year olds who between them had made millions of casts, caught thousands of trout and Atlantic Salmon on the fly. But for 2 days they struggled as novices and had a ball at Jim's Spey School.
Jim Rusher is a serious Spey fisher. Those that know Jim, know him mainly as the propriotor of Whitakers Sports Shop & Motel, Pulaski, NY. This is a world class area for Salmon and Steelhead from Sept. to April. Those that know Jim well, realize he's been a serious spey angler for about 8 years, spending about 6-8 weeks each season on the Matapedia, and other foreign rivers pursuing Atlantic Salmon. And prior to purchasing Whitakers, Jim was a golf pro. So this combination of knowing how to spey, and knowing how to teach makes Jim's Spey School a winner.
Spey casting is perhaps, the most artistic form of fly fishing. It has many advantages over the single handed rod, which we won't go into here, but the bottom line, it isn't simple. And to learn and understand it, thru books and videos is difficult. And knowing, even expertly, to fly cast with a normal fly rod doesn't give you much of an edge to the transition to the soft 2 hander.
The 2 day course runs 250.-300., includes lodging at the motel, and the use of the equiptment. There is a good discount for early, non-cancel registration which we all took advantage of. All in our course felt the charge was reasonable to cheap.
About 2 weeks prior to the school all attendees receive the SPEY SCHOOL AGENDA. This gives you an idea of what to bring and what to expect.
Each class day starts at the shop, with excellent coffee and about 10 minutes of class room discussion. The first day is devoted to the single spey cast and the second day putting it all together, the double spey cast.
Now spending a whole day working on a simple, single cast is work, and boring. To offset this, doing it on a beautiful day, on a great river, with the long shot of having a steelhead take the fly, is definitely a plus. The first reaction of all the students, and there is only 4, as Jim feels that is all he can give personal attention to, is that they didn't pay such attention to their normal one handed casting. The stress is to make cast after cast perfect.
All casting is timing, rhythm and technique. The technique is simple, but the timing and rhythm is new, difficult and putting it all together is the hard part. All students have various problems, and though they knew what they were doing wrong, you just seem to continue the error over and over. All in this class felt this is where Jim, as instructor, was at his best. The first time would bring one possible solution. The 6th time, Jim was still able to come up with something new and reasonable to try.
Like most fly fishing, equiptment is critical. Experts are able to compensate for inferior and/or mis-matched, but beginners are at a major disadvantage. Jim's Spey School has nothing but top notch tackle and matches.
Though the second day double spey lesson should go to late afternoon, we only went to lunch. Each student could execute the double spey, the only difference between them, was the consistency of good, clean ones. Even one student who felt he should repeat the class was seen to execute 9 very clean doubles in a row.
All attendees felt casting awareness was one of the main benefits of the school. "Casting was something I just did for 40 years, but along with the spey, I'll concentrate on improving my everyday fly casting.
The overall school experience with our class was outstanding. Knowing each other we traveled, ate and fished together during the school. The total first class meals, gas expenses from the New York city area was an additional 70./person. Before class angling netted 1 Atlantic and 4 Steelheads.
Presently Jim will be running these schools in Pulaski during slow angling periods: Aug., Dec., Feb.-Apr. In addition to the basic spey school, next season will be added an Intermediate course, and the following season, an Advance course. The Intermediate will start on what and how to fish these long rods.
If you go to the school and have afew older anglers having a ball, and mumbling something about failing, left back or repeating, you know you're at the right place.