2 WEIGHT SOFT HACKLE MACHINE

We’ve been waiting for the Orvis Mission Spey 2 weight for what seems like years, and are glad to announce that they have landed in Craig. The Orvis Mission 3 weight is our favorite do-everything trout spey rod for Montana. It’s an exceptional stick, and covers the widest range of trout swinging scenarios we’ve found in a single rod. And it does it without compromise. We love the 4 weight as well, but find it a bit much for most of our Missouri River fishing… though casting it is pure distance+joy.

We do prefer lighter than 3 weight rods for our mid-summer soft hackle swinging, and while the 3 weight Mission will do the job, we often move towards 1 and 2 weights. This aids in gentle presentations, and helps to protect bites on light tippet. We let the design team at Orvis know that we needed the 2 weight, and that we don’t consider a rod company serious about Trout Spey if they aren’t producing a 2 weight rod (or lighter). We let them know repeatedly.

So here we have the new Orvis Mission 11’2” 2 weight, and we’ve had plenty of time to cast and fish a few prototypes and the final product this summer. The Mission DNA continues in the #2. Like the 3 and 4 weights, it leans ever so slightly to the “power” side of #2. Definitely not a whimpy soft-hackle only stick. For those who fish small and medium sized freestones, this rod might be a daily driver. Like the 3, this rod will perform many tasks, but we would recommend it primarily for Scandi lines/heads, and small soft hackles up to smaller buggers and squirrel leeches. A short sonar leader maybe, but we’d prefer to use it with a traditional 12’+ tapered leader.

We encourage you to swing by and demo this rod and formulate your own opinion about it’s performance, but here’s a few notes from our testing. Firstly, we will only talk about using a Scandi line or head, as we wouldn’t fish a Skagit head on a 2 weight. Mike McCune felt like the 240gr was perfect, and he considers this the right Scandi grain weight for 2 weight rods. I felt that 210 worked great with mono shooting line, but lacked energy when I tried a 210 Integrated line. 240 Integrated was much better. (McCune does not use integrated or coated running lines). 2 weight rods are the only rods that I still try with integrated lines, because I feel that soft hackle anglers are most likely to want the handling characteristics of a coasted running line. Especially true of old-school Syl Nemes soft-hackle types that have made the transition from single to two-hander.

At any rate, we’ll call it a Scandi rod for 210-240 grains, and 240 will make more casters smile than 210. Mike and I both used Scientific Anglers Spey Lite Scandi heads on mono shooting line, other than my integrated line testing. If for some reason you want to use a rod this light for Skagit, we recommend a 200gr SA or OPST.

*The new reel seat, and don’t forget the great full-cage Orvis SSR spey reel.*

NEW PAINT JOB + COMPONENTS

The Mission series is also getting a cosmetic, hardware and - unfortunately - a price update for the fall of 2025. There’s been a bit of confusion about this and Orvis has done some email promotions this week for the Mission series, so I expect to get some more questions regarding pricing this week. Orvis has made the following changes to the Mission series:

The blank is now black instead of olive.
The label has been updated to match the new Helios style.
The reel seat now has a really cool wood spacer.
REC Recoil titanium guides have replaced the chrome make guides.
Price increase from $798 to $998.

I think the rod is sharper looking with these changes, and I really like the black blank (though I also like the original graphics). The blank, aside from the color, remains the same as the previous Mission 3 and 4 weight rods. Since the 2 weight is a new model, you will only find it in the new paint job and at the new price. But we still have a couple first version Mission 3 and 4 weights that we will keep priced at $798 until they are gone and we replace them with Version 2.

So, yadda-yadda-yada, it’s a great rod and we think it will be very well received. If you like to keep things near the surface, I could see fishing this rod on the Mo’ from post runoff through Christmas. It’ll handle Thin Mints and smaller, along with short poly-leaders, which will cover most fishing between early-July and late-December. It will also be a fantastic rod for all summer/fall soft-hackle swinging on the Big Hole, the Clark Fork or the Bitterroot.

Still a bit weedy for serious swing fishing right now on the Missouri, and the sun and low flows won’t help. But before you know it we’ll be swinging Red Delicious and Micro Zonkers. Fishing on foot.Thinking “less top hand, more bottom hand”. Come by and check out the new Mission 2 weight, and if you’ve been on the fence about a 3 or 4 weight, nows the time to grab the last V1 models at $798.

Below: Version 1 graphics and reel seat above, new graphics and reel seat below.