I wish I had a day off to go fishing for every time I’ve heard a flyfisherman say something like”. . . they were mostly small fish, but since I was using that little six-foot rod of mine, I really had a ball.”
My instantaneous reaction to such statements is, sure he did-if “ball” is short for balderdash.
For I’m convinced that the most overrated thing in America today (with the possible exception of home movies) is the short fly-rod. It is the least effective, least comfortable, least “sporting” fly-fishing tool ever invented for fishing running water. I know it’s risky to knock another man’s woman, dog, or favorite rod, but look at the evidence.
At first glance it may seen that the choice between a short rod and a long one for stream fishing is simply a matter of whim. After all, a fairly skilled caster can lay out sixty, seventy, or more feet of line with a tiny rod-more than enough distance for most trout-stream situations.
However, staying away from, and out of sight of, the fish is only a small, easy part of the game. It is the ability to present the right fly in a way that deceives the trout and the knack of hooking those you’ve fooled that separate the fishermen from the casters. And here, the short rod short-changes you in any number of ways.
A stubby rod leaves far too much line on the water while you’re fishing out the average cast, and every extra foot of this is a crippling disadvantage, whether you’re presenting a dry fly, wet fly, nymph, streamer, or (forgive me, Federation of Fly Fishers) live bait.
Suppose, for example, you’re casting to a fish thirty feet away. With a six-foot rod, tip held high, you’ll probably still leave eighteen feet of line and leader on the water when you make your presentation. A bit more when fishing upstream, a bit less when working downstream. On the other hand, with a ten-foot rod, casting under the same conditions, only about ten feet of terminal tackle-perhaps just your leader- would be lying on the surface. You judge which presentation is most likely to give you a badly dragging dry fly or a sunk fly that’s traveling unnaturally and out of control.
Admittedly, the amount of line on the water isn’t a critical factor when you’re fishing a still-water pond or lake. But remember, my complaint about short rods was made about running-water fishing. And on streams with braiding currents, tongues of fast water, and unpredictable eddies, the more line you have on the water the more you’re inviting an unappetizing presentation of your fly.
It is also much easier to hook a fish when most of your line is off the water. You’re in more intimate touch with your fly and you don’t have to guess at how hard to tug to straighten out the esses in your line, overcome the friction of water, and then set the hook delicately. Over ninety percent of the trout broken off are lost at the strike. Examine the circumstances the next time you leave your fly in a fish. I think you’ll agree that the problem nearly always is too much line on the water when the take occurs.
It took me years to learn these simple fly-fishing facts of life. The truth started to sink in only about a dozen years ago when I was fishing in the mountains of southern France. I was using a snappy, eight-foot rod (certainly a sensible length by eastern U.S. standards), but I wasn’t catching many fish and almost no really good ones. This was slow, clear, limestone water, heavily fished by vacationers and constantly harvested by a troup of professional fishermen who supplied the local hotels. Any fish that had run this gauntlet and grown to decent size was as carefully trained as a moonshot astronaut.
The professionals finally showed me their secret-though they looked on it more as common sense than as an ingenious tech- nique. They’d learned that, in this clear, slick water, they couldn’t approach these fish from upstream. Yet neither could they give the trout a look at their leader. So they cast upstream to a rising or observed fish, but with a variation of the conventional method. They’d drop their fly-usually a sparsely dressed wet pattern on a light hook - just downstream of the trout’s tail so the leader wouldn’t pass over his head. When the tiny ripples from the fly’s entry passed over the trout’s nose, he would usually turn around to see what sort of insect had fallen into the water behind him. If the stunt was pulled off perfectly, all the trout could see now was the artificial sinking slowly down-current. No leader showed at all because it would be pointing directly away, behind the fly.
Any line splash or drag meant instant failure, and I began to see why these experts, who supported their families with their catches all summer, used long rods-ten to ten and one-half feet long, in fact. “With a rod of three meters you are just beginning to fish,” they told me. Three meters - that’s nine feet, ten inches. Their long rods let them cover a fish from a safe distance with only part of the leader entering the water. I finally learned how to execute this presentation with occasional success after days of practice, but my eight-foot rod, even though it could throw seventy to eighty feet of line with ease, was a big handicap here.
Fishermen I saw in the Pyrenees on the Spanish border had taken this theory one step further. They used rods twelve to fourteen feet long on the tumbling mountain streams and these kept so much line off the water that there wasn’t even a word for “drag” in their local patois. They would simply swing their fly (or more often maggot) directly up-current and let it drift back natu- rally, keeping in touch by raising the rod-tip. They neither added nor took in line, but they took in trout with such regularity that a really devout conservationist wouldn’t even mention this method.
The implications of all this are enormous to the dry-fly man with his almost paranoid fear of drag. The perfect presentation of his fly has to be one dapped on the surface with no leader at all touching the water. This is as true whether the offering is to be made dead drift with the natural flow of the current or whether the fly is to be bounced on the surface like a hovering or egg-laying insect.
I proved this to my satisfaction several years ago after a neighbor of mine had been given an ancient and enormous English fly rod. This awesome wand was a full twenty feet long, was made of a solid wood called greenheart, and must have weighed over three pounds. However, this 36-ounce beauty had a light, flexible tip- it was built when single strands of horsehair were used as leader-tippets-and I decided to try out a hunch with it.
I found some pretext to borrow this rod for a couple of hours and, after I’d rigged it up with a light line and fine leader, I headed for a nearby river. Once I got the hang of it, I could dap a fly on the surface thirty to 35 feet away and make it dance and hop there with no leader at all touching the water. Smart, overfished trout nearly herneated themselves to grab my fly. If I’d continued to use that rod the State Conservation Department would have named me Public Enemy No. 1. However, my friend soon retired the rod to his collector’s case and perhaps that was just as well. After two hours with that wagon-tongue, I felt as if I’d slipped every disc in my back. I guess they don’t build men the way they used to, either.
Going to the opposite extreme, you can cast and catch fish with no rod at all. This would give you a rod some twenty feet shorter than the old English muscle-builder I just described. I have never seen anyone over five years old fishing a trout stream with a handline, which would have to be the worst possible tackle for trouting. However, the reason is not that you couldn’t cover the water or land the fish.
The late Ellis Newman could take the reel off the rod and with his bare right hand work out all ninety feet of a double-taper and keep it in the air, false-casting. Perhaps you could, too, if you practiced long enough. But would you catch as many trout that way?
Similarly, Lee Wulff once hand-cast to a nearby salmon and played that full-grown fish to the beach with just the reel in his hand. No rod at all. Again, you might do that, too, with practice. You might be able to dine out on this feat for weeks if you could tell the epic story with enough suspense and gusto. But I don’t think you’d want to make a habit of fishing like that.
So you see, a fly-rod isn’t a necessity. It’s merely a convenience and a comfort.
How can I say “comfort” after that twenty-footer nearly put me in bed under traction? And doesn’t a long rod have to punish the angler more than a short one? Well, yes and no.
In the first place, sheer lightness in a rod doesn’t necessarily mean less effort. The difference between a five-ounce rod and a longer two-ounce model in ratio to the angler’s total weight on the scales is about the same as drinking half a tumbler of water or going thirsty. So rest assured that the longer, slightly heavier rod won’t weigh you down.
I have fished with many superb casters who said they revelled in the lightness of their short rods. But how they huffed and puffed and sweated. They were using both arms, both shoulders, and their back to make those long casts with their toy tackle. Double-hauling may be the ultimate technique for tournament casting, but it’s about as placid a way to enjoy a summer evening as alligator wrestling.
The point is, ask not what you can do for the rod, but rather what the rod can do for you. With a long rod, a small movement of the arm or wrist will take any reasonable length of line off the water for the back-cast because there really isn’t that much line clutched by surface tension. The line then goes back over your head, straightens out, and bends the rod backwards. Now a minimal effort forward with forearm, wrist, or both, and the rod snaps back, propelling the line forward again. What could be easier than that? The rod has done most of the work for you. Your hand has moved a foot or so with very little exertion instead of moving three feet or so and bringing shoulder and back muscles into play, as well.
My experiences in France were not the only reason my rods became longer about a dozen years ago. At approximately that time, I read an article in an outdoor magazine extolling the joys of minirod fishing. The author honestly admitted that he did, at first, have trouble avoiding drag with his shorter rod, but that he had solved this problem by holding the rod high above his head as he fished out every cast. Thus his six-footer, he claimed, was every bit as effective as an eight- or eight-and-a-half-footer and (get this) because his rod weighed only 1¼ ounces, it was far less fatiguing to fish with. Anyone who subscribes to that theory should now hold his right arm fully extended over his head for two or three minutes and tell me how it feels. I can’t recall seeing any more articles from this man and I can only assume that acute bursitis has prevented him from taking pencil in hand ever since.
If a twenty-footer can break your back and a six-footer gives you too much drag and too much work, what length should an efficient and comfortable fly rod be? A lot depends on your physical makeup and your style of fishing. If, on the one hand, you’re a continuous and compulsive false-caster who likes to fish pocket water upstream where the effective float is a foot or less, any rod over eight feet might put your arm in a sling. If, on the other hand, your style is more deliberate and you spend most of your time on slower water where you may make fewer than ten casts per minute instead of nearly a hundred, you could probably handle a ten-footer with ease for a whole day’s fishing.
And don’t be misled by the “bush-rod” addicts. They argue that you get hung up too often fishing small, overgrown streams if you use anything longer than a five-footer. But the fact is, you’11 get hung up a lot with a very short rod, too, because any form of true casting here will put your fly and leader in the branches. A long line presentation is seldom an effective way to fish a string of small pot-holes, anyway. Drag is instantaneous and disastrous with a lot of line out on this type of water. Here, you’re far better off with the long rod, flipping or swinging your fly to the chosen spot while you make the extra effort to conceal yourself.
Use as long a rod as you comfortably can. I have been fishing with an 8½-foot bamboo that weighs 4½ ounces for the past several years. I am now going through a trial-marriage with a 9½-foot glass rod that weighs about the same. This liaison has been so enjoyable that I’m now searching for a ten-footer with the same qualities.
On salmon rivers where I make only four or five casts per minute, my favorite wet-fly rod is a 10½-footer that works beautifully with a medium-weight #6 line. But I’ll admit that I have to drop back to an 8½-foot stick for dry-fly fishing. I just can’t false-cast that often with the long rod-although that 101/2-footer is the most effortless wet-fly rod I’ve ever hefted. And let me repeat: I find all these rods, both trout and salmon models, comfortable for a full day’s fishing.
In case you’re interested, the man who wields these monster rods bears no resemblance to King Kong. I don’t tip the scales at 140 pounds with chest waders, spare reels, and enough assorted fly boxes to drown me if I fell into deep water.
I’ll have to admit, though, there’s one disadvantage to long fly rods - and it’s a beauty. When you’ve finally hooked a fish, the long rod makes the fish grow stronger. For that extra length gives the fish greater leverage against your hand.
But isn’t this precisely what the short-rod people are espousing? That fish are now smaller and tamer so we must use tackle that magnifies the quarry? Yet aren’t they actually doing just the opposite?
There are only two basic ways to measure a rod’s ability to glorify the struggles of a fish. One is the weight or force it takes to bend the rod properly. This factor is usually printed on the rod just in front of the cork grip in terms of the weight of line it takes to bring out its action. I’ve seen a lot of 6-foot rods that call for a #6 or #7 line to make them work properly. This means that it takes between 160 and 185 grains (437’/2 grains equal one ounce) of moving line to flex the rod adequately. My 9’/2-footer, on the other hand, needs only a #4, or 120 grains, to flex the rod to its optimum. Draw your own conclusions.
But there’s yet another factor that makes one rod more sporting than another for playing a fish. That’s the leverage against your hand. With a fly rod-which must be considered a simple lever once a fish is hooked - the fulcrum is where the hand holds the rod. You don’t need an M.I.T. degree to see that the mechanical advantage is approximately fifty percent greater in favor of the fish and against the sportsman with a nine-foot rod than it is with a six-footer.
Despite this elementary fact, I am often accused of derricking small fish out of the water with a whacking great salmon rod. Fault my reasoning if you can: I’m convinced the shoe is on the other foot. I maintain that short-rodders are not only selling themselves short on presentation and overexercising themselves needlessly, but grinding down small fish with mechanically superior weapons, as well.
If you have followed my argument carefully so far and, I hope, found it airtight, you’re probably asking, “How can so many of nature’s noblemen have been taken in by this cruel hoax?” The answer is a believe-it-or-notter that would have Ripley sitting on the edge of his chair.
In the beginning, all rods were long. They were used to swing some lure out to the unsuspecting fish and to haul the catch back to shore again. They were very much like our present-day cane poles and probably just about as long.
Rods were still very long in the seventeenth century. Izaak Walton recommends a snappy eighteen-foot, two-handed model as the best choice in his day. He and Charles Cotton dapped, dibbled, and dangled their flies (and worms and maggots) on the water with these mighty poles with killing effect on the trout - and probably on their backs, too.
In the following century the scientific progress of the industrial revolution reached the angling world. Fishing reels appeared on the market and soon became popular because they allowed fishermen to lengthen or shorten line easily and to play larger fish more effectively. But the rods themselves remained long.
One hundred years after that, in the not-too-distant 1 800s, rods still averaged a sensible twelve feet until dressed silk fly lines and split bamboo were introduced just after the midpoint of the century. This made true fly-casting, as we now know it, possible for the average angler and, as this novel technique became popu- lar, rods grew shorter and lighter. After all, why should the angler stand there waving half a tree over the water when he could cast to the far bank and beyond with a zippy little ten-footer?
But along with these advances came another type of progress: overpopulation, overfishing, and pollution. Trout became fewer and farther between. Fishing could no longer be the simple culling of nature’s bounty as it had been in Walton’s day. It needed a mystique, a philosophy, a raison d’ètre. This, Frederick M. Halford and other British Victorians readily provided, and their code soon spread across the Atlantic in a slightly modified form. If the sheer joy of catching fish was no longer a sure thing, at least there was the joy of casting. A day astream, the play of the sweet bamboo, the lovely hiss of the line, the fly cocked perkily on the sparkling riffle-who cares for a full creel with all this? You’ve read it all a hundred times in a hundred different forms. (I’ve even seen true believers act annoyed when an occasional hooked fish interrupted the rhythm of this ritual!) Under this type of credo, it’s easy to see how rods were miniaturized into today’s six-foot toys.
All the while, of course, anglers still secretly wanted to catch fish-and I suppose you do, too. But our artificial Victorian code insists that this be done only by improving your casting or presentation or by tinkering up a bit better imitation of, say, the female Iron Blue Dun. Reverting to aboriginal tackle and the more varied presentations it puts at your fingertips is unthinkable.
Well, I for one think it is thinkable. And, if you really want to catch more trout and enjoy more sport doing it, perhaps you should think about it, too. Going back to eighteen-foot poles might be a bit much. But do try a new nine or ten-footer. If a ribbon-clerk like me can swing one all day long, you’ll be able to handle one like a conductor’s baton.
Can’t I, after all this, find at least one kind thing to say about our new short fly rods? Well, yes, perhaps this. I am reminded of the country sage’s defense of bad breath. “It’s mighty unpleasant, but it sure beats no breath at all.”
So I guess short fly rods beat handlines - or no rods at all. But
not by very much.
© 1975 Leonard M. Wright