Spey Tech Alert: Rio Skagit MOW Tips

Rio has just announced a new line of sinktips for Skagit-style spey casting called ‘Rio MOW Tips’. The tips are mostly 10 feet long, and they combine different lengths of floating and sinking sections to allow for more consistent fishing and casting performance while fishing sinking sections of various lengths.

Problems MOW Tips Solve

1. Sinktips made of different lengths of sinking line like Rio T-14 cast and fish differently, due to their differences in length and grain weight. Swapping out your 10 feet of T-14 for 15 feet of T-14 adds 5 feet of length and 75 grains, and that changes your casting stroke quite a bit.

2. There’s been a trend lately towards fishing very short sinktips in certain situations, and these rigs can be kind of ‘boomerangy’ due to their super short length.

3. Making sinktips in custom lengths is kind of a pain in the butt.

These tips were designed by Mike McCune, Scott O’Donnell and Ed Ward (figure out the name yet?), and they’ll come as 3 different sets, with all the sinking sections in each set made of Rio T-8, T-11 or T-14.

What’s In Each Set

1. Each set contains 6 tips.

2. A 10 foot floating tip

3. A tip with 7.5 feet of floating line connected to 2.5 feet of sinking tip

4. A tip with 5 feet of floating line connected to 5 feet of sinking tip

5. A tip with 2.5 feet of floating line connected to 7.5 feet of sinking tip

6. A 10 foot level sinktip

7. A 12.5 foot level sinktip

For any application other than really dredging, you ought to be able to find something that works in a kit like that!