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Fish with Bish Newsletter
August 1998

Longer Rods Proving Ideal For Finicky Fish

A few years ago I watched with some amusement as a team of Japanese fishermen unfurled their 4 metre and more rods for a snapper fishing trip up in the Bay of Islands. The reason for my astonishment was the fact that we were fishing off a charter boat.

Four metre rods off a boat?
Yes, but my amusement soon turned to intrigue.

These rods were not surf rods, but finely tapered long rods with plenty of grunt when needed. The Japanese fishermen baited up with whole pilchards and virtually no weight. The bait was tossed out near the rocks and kelp, and as it slowly sunk the fishermen maintained constant contact with the bait as it sunk down the rock face.

Any doubts I may have had about the efficacy of their methods were soon dispelled by the results. They caught heaps of big fish.

Once hooked the long rods with very soft tip sections maintained constant pressure on the fish, and they were boated in very short order. A couple of kingis came to the boat with very bemused looks on their faces. How come these long rods could exert so much pressure, they seemed to be saying?

The key to the success of this method seemed to be at three levels.

The longer, soft tipped rods made casting whole pilchards well in amongst the kelp and rocks and easy proposition. Once in among the rocks, the bait could be controlled as it drifted down the rock and reef face.

On hook-up the unremitting pressure of the long rod bought fish to the boat in a very short time. Any problems of landing fish once they reached the surface were solved with very long handled gaffs and nets.

This whole exercise was a real eye opener.
Now some of the more successful Kiwi fishermen have picked up on this basic idea and it is proving very successful indeed.

Still it is not as though the idea is new – Alvey users have been using the basic idea for years off the rocks. Many top Alvey fishers have been landing on offshore rocks and tossing out whole bait fish of their long soft tipped rods and working these baits slowly up through the kelp. Highly effective and a method that has accounted for many truly big snapper.

There are a number of rods about now that will do the trick out of boats, but these tend to be in the up to three metres lengths. Hopefully our rod manufacturers will pick up on this new trend and produce or import longer rods for this style of fishing. Reels are no problem, there are plenty of reels around that will do the job. Alvey reels or the bigger faced spinning reels are ideal.

Overhead reels are more of a pain than an advantage for this style of fishing. Trying to cast unweighted baits on a long soft rod is hard enough, but add any wind into the equation and you have a perfect recipe for building better bird’s nests.
The only real problem that occurs regularly with this type of fishing is the problem of line twist. Slowly retrieving light baits can lead to horrendous line twist, because there is not enough pressure on the line to turn a swivel. Very good quality swivels must be used to overcome this.

It is all to easy to dismiss some techniques and ideas from overseas as not being applicable here in New Zealand – but this new long rod method is proving very effective for those with an eye to the different.

Point Loading Is A Great Way To Break A rod

One of the most misunderstood aspects of the use of fishing rods is the subject of ‘Point Loading’. Yet this accounts for a very large portion of all rod breakages.
When a rod is under load with the weight of a fish, the line holding the fish should pull the rod into a curve. This is no problem if the rod is held at no more than a 60° angle to the water.
But lift the rod tip up to a sharper angle, approaching vertical and you have problems.

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The first illustration shows a rod under an ideal load. The rod is held at somewhere near 45° to the water, and the line is pulling evenly along the rod pulling it into a curve. All the force of the pull is pulling down and away from the rod tip.

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The next illustration shows point loading in its rod breaking glory. With the rod tip held at a high angle, some of the force is pulling down and away from the tip at point ‘A’, but most of the force is pulling back down the rod itself at point ‘B’. Somewhere along the rod, and usually in the top third of the rod, all that force gets concentrated in one place (the point). Suddenly the rod breaks.

It is surprising how little force is required to break a rod under point loading situations.
There are many ways to achieve . A classic method is holding the rod tip high while trying to land a fish near the boat or rocks. The rod is held high while you try and reach out to net or gaff the fish.

Another good method is to rear back on the rod when terminal tackle becomes snagged.
A less common method but still effective is to pull the line back down the rod when changing terminal tackle. Fly fishermen are especially prone to this one, when trying to pull out enough line to commence casting.

Over enthusiastic ‘short stroking’ when using stand up game gear can get you into territory if you are not careful, especially if the fish is down close to the boat.

Just last weekend down in a river near Turangi I watched an angler struggling to net a fish, while he was standing in mid stream. The fish still had plenty of go, but the angler was determined to land the fish as quickly as possible. He pulled back on the rod to the point where the rod tip was way back behind his head, and the line was running very near parallel down the rod.

The end was inevitable. With a loud crack the rod tip broke, the sudden slack allowing the fish to jerk the hook out of its mouth. The angler was furious and of course blamed the rod. I would not like to be the store owner when this gentleman arrived on Monday

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