High Rod, Low Rod

High Rod, Low Rod

I still feel bad for Al Keller. I apologize to him every time we fish together, and we still do that every few years. He’s one of my favorite guides and best buddies in the whole fishing world.

It was many years ago when we were both just starting out–me as a budding outdoor writer, Al as a still wet-behind-the-ears tarpon guide in the 10,000 Islands in southwest Florida. My father-in-law hired Al to take us on a half-day charter, but my wife subbed in for her dad at the last minute.

I’ll remember this forever. We were booking across a bay, and Al suddenly cut the boat motor and leapt up on the poling platform. I still have no idea how he did it, but he saw two laid-up tarpon from hundreds of yards away, and by the time the skiff’s momentum had stopped, we were slowly, silently sneaking right up on the fish from about one hundred yards out, and the tarpon hadn’t moved a dime.

I got up on the front deck and stripped out some fly line. The boat slid within seventy feet. “Go ahead, take a shot,” Al said.

Looking at the closest big gray torpedo silhouette, I muttered back, “Which end is which?”

“Left side,” he whispered. And so I let fly with a crisp and honest cast that plopped my fly about three feet from the tarpon.

The cast turned out to be the only thing I did really well.

I still remember–even dream about it decades later–watching that ancient dinosaur fish take notice, spin around and then accelerate its tail motions. Then that big ol’ bucket mouth inhaled that fly. I strip-set with three hard jerks (maybe the second thing I did right), and it was on! The tarpon bolted away and made a thunderous gill-rattling jump that made my knees knock. I bowed to that silver king, just as I’d been told (okay, maybe a third thing I did right), and when the tarpon crashed lengthwise on the flat, the noise shattered the calm, like a piano had been dropped from the sky.

We fought that fish for more than half an hour. But the whole time, I held my rod tip high to the sky. I was a trout fisherman, after all, and had ingrained in my mind to “keep that tip up!” with every fish I’d ever caught. Al, to his credit, was incredibly patient, and he urged me to lower the rod tip and fight the fish through the line, and not the rod. But I flailed, and eventually failed, when that fish found a deep bucket in the mangroves, and broke me off. After all that!

When we got back to the boat ramp, Al kindly took me aside and had me hold the rod as he held on to the leader. Не said, “Go ahead, pull me around with the rod tip high.” And I pulled and flexed the rod until I thought it might break, but I didn’t budge Al. And then Al said, “Now drop the rod tip, and pull on me with the line.” Which I did, and I almost immediately tipped Al, still holding the leader, right over on his knees.

Lesson learned. That “tip-up” thing is good for smaller fish.

It’s good for steering around obstacles like tree stumps in a river, or coral heads when you have a bonefish on. But it isn’t worth jack when you have a big boy on and you need to move that fish around to effectively fight and land it.

And that’s true for big trout, steelhead, salmon and many other fish. Go ahead and pull on your fishing buddy if you don’t believe me. You’ll find that you can move something with a low rod position, even with 4X or 5X tippet. All that high rod tip does is ensure you a stalemate. If you want to dictate the fight, you must learn to fight fish through the line and leader, not just the rod. If I were to suggest a cutoff–I’d say two pounds. Anything over two pounds–for damn sure a one-hundred-pound tarpon–you need to be fighting that fish low and steering like reins on a horse’s bit, not high like a maypole.

I’m sorry about that, Al. Still am.