you grab the rod and free spool it till the fish swallow the bait. after he swallows it, you set the bail and set the hook hard. That’s pretty much it. The fight is on and you ether win or the fish wins. dee and i prided ourselves in the fact that the fish rarely won. We set our rods out and the waiting game began. Watching a pitching, rolling rod tip and being able to tell if a fish has a hold of it is really a gift. You can watch and watch and if you don’t know what you are looking at you will never see the bite. i have fished with guys days on end, and caught many a fish and the guys i have fished with have told me after the fact, you know ray i never saw a single bite. i always found that strange. The rules are this, if you see the rod get a hit - no matter whose rod it is - if the other guy don’t see it you just grab the rod, set the hook, then give the rod back to the owner as soon as the fish is hooked. Those are the rules. i can assure you dee has never ever grabbed my rod and on the other hand i had never ever grabbed his. it would be very embarrassing if i was getting a bite and didn’t see it. i would bet if dee ever had a bite and he didn’t see it would bring him to tears. The worse the weather is the harder it is to see the bite. on this day it would be a staring contest for hours on end. No blinking you might miss something. about two hours went by. The wind had picked up a bit, the boat was holding nicely on her hook. By that i mean, she was holding steady and not jumping around too badly. i was watching my rod and dees’ as
well that’s what you do when your fishing. dees’ rod got a tiny, tiny bump. i gave him a second to see it (which he didn’t need) he grabbed that thing in a half second like it was made of gold. He flipped the drag release and let it free spool. The line started out it gave a little bump along the way, that was a sure sign that the fish was swimming with it. More line out, a couple of more jumps on the line, it took off like a bat out of hell. The line was peeling off by now. He flipped the drag lock back on, waited for the slack to dissipate off the line and he set the hook. The rod doubled over in protest, the drag peeled off the line, the ratchet screamed it’s warning ... FiSH oN!!!!!!
fall 2013
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