How do you fight a large fish on a fly rod with coils of line in your lap?
I fish from a kayak and hooked about a 6 to 7lb largemouth bass in the dark yesterday evening and had one heck of a time fighting him with my line hand. I brought him in and released after a nice trip around the lake! I did not have time to real slack line in so fought it with my line hand retrieving line in as best as possible but did get a few friction burns!
Needless to say this was a personal best for me on a fly rod!
You mention getting a ride from the fish. Was it possible to feed him line instead of letting him drag your boat?
I have made it a habit to try and get most of my fish on the reel. It makes life easier landing fish without worrying about loose line to get hung up. I use reels with exposed spool rims. The kind people like for palming reels when fish run. I find it quick to slap the reel with my palm to wind in line quickly without ever having to grab the reel knob, especially seeing as I switch hands to reel and cast.
I also try to keep as little line out as I am using to decrease hang ups. I am continually reeling in and stripping out line as I need it.
It is all about practice, so that it becomes second nature when the big one does show up.
With the line under the index finger of the rod hand I reel in as best I can. I try and give as little line out as I can while getting the fish onto the reel. Unless there are bolders or weeds to get hung up on I don’t care too much about giving out some line. Once the fish is on the reel, I can do as I please.
Congrats on landing a nice fish. Me being new to fly fishing I have not yet had the good fortune to land a large fish yet ( large being over a 6 inch Bluegill )
None the less I would think it would be best to play a large fish from the reel.
I keep the line between my index and middle finger. I then reel in slack as quickly as possible so that I can fight him off the reel. If the fish goes on a run before I get the slack out he will most likly have solved the slack issue. I find keeping the line between my two fingers alows me to provide some drag and to keep the line taught. I can just clamp down harder against the grip if it’s a really nice fish.
With practice I have learned to use the fingers on the rod hand as a drag mechanism, and taken some large fish on light tippet this way.
In many of the waters I fish, if I take any time to try to get the bass on reel, I have taken too much time and end up with the fish, leader, and fly line wrapped in structure. The fish doesn’t have to run to cause me problems, it just needs to move laterally and wrap around things between me and the fish… The same for much of the saltwater fishing that I do. I need to immediately get the fish moving towards me. So I have to clamp the line against the grip with the fingers of my rod hand. Since I started wearing sun gloves all the time five years ago, I have not had a single line friction burn because the fingers on the gloves protect me. I also use Petersen Stripping guards, essentially a lycra sleeve that can be slipped over a finger, which also provide similar protection.
One other thing that I have learned over the years is that I can really put a lot of pressure on a fish, even with light tippet, than I thought was possible when I started fly fishing. I have given demonstrations to other anglers where I rigged a rod and tied the lead to a spring scale and asked them to pull until they thought the tippet or rod was going to break. Few pulled harder than 3 lbs and were very surprised by the result. Many anglers give line when they do not need to, prolonging the fight and creating more opportunity for problems to occur.
One way to control the coils in your lap when fishing from a kayak is to employ some type of stripping basket or platform with spikes or cones. The spikes or cones will keep the coils from getting tangled.
Dealing with a fish towing your yak is another issue. With a float tube or pontoon boat you can kick backwards against the fish’s pull. Some anglers who use sit on top yaks will hang their feet over the side to kick with fins in this situation, but this does not work with every angler/yak combination.
I think my biggest technique error and many pointed it out is that I’m not using my rod hand for line control.
My left hand is doing all the work and from what many said I need to get my right/rod hand involved. This defeinetly would have helped.
Oh, by the way getting towed around in my kayak was something I’ve always joked about wanting to happen!
Scubatim just to make you feel better, I’ve been fishing for bass on a fly rod for 4-5 years and just now experiencing success. I can catch bass very consistently with baitcasting and spinning gear but have been frustrated with fly rodding for bass! It’s really hard to stick with a fly rod when you know you can catch bass by throwing a senko at them but the thrill is definetly worth the frustration! Hang in there I know I’ve thought many times of not even taking a fly rod with me cause I was expecting not to catch something.
Wayne have no fear it will be a cold day in hell before I give up my fly rod ( even knowing I can go out and catch nice bass on any given day with my conventional gear) I am loving fly fishing, fly casting and the learning process it takes to get good at it.
One of these days I will get to post a picture of me with an 8 pound Largemouth with my bass fly in its mouth.
I will never stop baitcasting but I am fly fisherman.
I’ve been bass fishing with a fly rod for quite a few years.
Caught some large bass.
Never, ever, not even once, have I used a ‘fly reel’ to fight a bass.
The skilled hands of an experienced angler are far superior to ANY mechanical drag they have built into a fly reel. I prefer to trust me, not some unknown design engineer and the assembly skills of an anonymous factory worker.
I’ve reeled in a few trout with the reel, mainly bacause it’s the last fish of the day and I’m going to quit anyway, and since it’s just a trout, it’s not critical if I actually land it or not. But for bass, a fish that ‘matters’ to me, I want the fight to be as personal as possible. I want positive control of when and if the fish takes line. I want control of how much pressure I put on the fish. I want to ‘feel’ the whole thing and succeed or fail based on my fish fighting abilities, not the ‘skill’ with which I twist a knob on a drag setting.
The management of the loose line, dealing with the tangling and such, is all part of the ‘skill’ of fighting a fish. Like any other skill, it takes practice to become good at it.
wayneb, what was the length on the bass. I caught a 18 1/4 lmb this spring and it was a rush. It’s though on a kayak, I have one and it hurts my back. I’d like to get outriggers for it so I can stand up. I caught another nice one last year and when I tried to stop it it broke the surgen’s knot on my 8lb test. I will never use a surgen’s loop to connect the tippets again.
Congrat’s on a job well done!..It is a very rare occasion that I ever get to fight a fish on the reel, As I only try that IF the fish put’s it’s self on the reel…
Even big fish rarely take up enough slack for that…I do want to get those “Stripping Guard’s” One’a these day though!! They look like a useful thing to have along…Seen feather Craft carries them…but the list for needful things is a long one…
I don’t consider myself an expert, but I’ll tell you what worked for me last night… I use my left hand as a “reel” (see post on “Finger-Reeling” for explanation) to control the slack, and strip the line once I get one on. If you need to feed line, it’s simple to give line from the finger-reel.
I spend each summer in the wilds of Colorado (tough gig, but someone has to do it…).
Don’t have a computer with me there.
So, I don’t get to the internet until I get back.
I’m back in sunny and hot Arizona until the end of May. Talk about heat shock, I left Colorado at 38 degrees (dawn temp at 7600 feet) and got to Tucson at six in the evening and it was 94 degrees…gosh awful hot.
Welcome back Buddy, I missed your bass discusions! I alos found you comment very approprieat and encouraging!
Jkilroy: I don’t know how long it was, somewhere over 20". It was almost completly dark out to the point couldn’t get my cell phone camera to work. I even tried using rod as refeence for length but realized the rod didnt have any decent reference points either.
Jcasebee: I followed your hand reel discusion and found it very appripriate to my situation.
One thing I learned form this adventure it to be better prepared for that big one! The next time I went fishing I was more attentaive to using my right/rod hand for line control even while stripping.
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.
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