Wayne,



For me, the trickiest time is when a big one makes that intial blazing run. The fish usually takes your fly about halfway through the retrieve, which means there's lots of line loops in the floor of the boat (or lying on the bank at your feet). These loops will get jerked up violently and have the potential to wrap around your rod in a flicker of the eye, snugging up almost like a half hitch. If this happens, no more line gets pulled through the rod guides and the fish probably breaks you off.

You must pinch this rapidly escaping line between the index finger and thumb of your "off-rod" hand, then just make your best guess on the amount of pinch pressure to apply as a brake.

Here's one of the hardest things: in the initial moments it helps to ignore the fish entirely and instead look down and focus your attention on the location, condition and movement of those line loops. Because unless you control their motion in those first critical seconds of the fish's flight, you're in trouble.

But...isn't this a nice sort of trouble to be in?


Joe
"Better small than not at all."