Walter & Group....
Peter Minnick writes:
Thanks Gordy....In the March/April issue FFSW article Top Gun....about tarpon
rods Ted Lund ends the article with fighting techniques saying that he prefers
to "control the head by keeping his nose up - rather than going down and dirty
with the nose down...." could you comment on this.
Also in
trying to duplicate Lefty's tight loops it occurred to me that he is outside of
the short head and does not have as much weight on the tip as with a long
bellied distance line which exerts more bend causing longer tip travel.....thus
wider but still narrow loops.
Peter
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Peter,
Good teaching questions with regard to fishing and casting !
When you fight a large tarpon with the rod tip raised in trying to, "keep his nose up" you cannot apply enough pressure to break his spirit. When fought this way for a long period, you can land the fish but only by literally wearing him out making it hard to get a successful release. Floyd Franke points out in his book, FISH ON that when you fight any fish with the rod tip high the resistance applied to the creature is not very great ... no where near as great as the pressure the angler can apply with the rod tip down. Once the long runs of a tarpon have stopped and he gets closer to the skiff, the trick is to repeatedly apply pressure in the direction opposite the way the fish turns. (as though you were constantly trying to pull him backward). When he gets closer, this can by combined with the technique of trying to pull his head down a long as the fish is near the surface. You never want to pull him in the direction he's facing.
I know of no one who finishes off a large tarpon faster than Stu Apte. Stu uses the, "down and dirty" technique. Billy Pate uses this technique with giant tarpon. The trick is to know exactly when to use it. Once the fish is close and no longer full of, "fire", placing the rod way down in the water and literally pulling his head down destabilizes the creature rather than tiring him and yields the desired result of having the fish turn on side for a more expeditious release.
At the very end, when the tarpon's spirit appears broken and the fish turns on his side, I DO (at that point only) raise my rod and keep the head up .... but only to bring the leader to hand for release. If you don't do this at this point, the tarpon may get his head down thus adding more minutes to the fight resulting in greater fish fatigue. You will note that when your guide gets the leader in hand, he does the same thing as he holds the fish's head up and glides the shock tippet to him. (I more often am alone in doing all this. Finishing off the tarpon when you have no help demands the use of some other techniques .... NOT so easy.)
With respect to your comment on Lefty's tight loops: I have fished with Lefty as he gets the same super tight loops with long belly WF/F lines and intermediate longer belly lines as well. One can still have nice tight loops with lots of rod load (a lot of rod bend) so long as the path of the rod tip remains close to a straight path and the tip is dipped only a tiny bit below the oncoming line as the rod comes to the rod straight position (RSP). Everything has to come together well .... the power applied matching the length of line carried, the stroke and rod arc matching the weight of the line carried, and (as Lefty says) the distance that you speed up and stop short enough so that the tip of the rod dips only a tiny distance below the oncoming line at the point of loop formation (RSP). From this point on, the fly leg of the loop travels only slightly above the rod tip.
Lefty (as many really great casters) can carry more overhang than less skillful ones.
One nice trick for those wishing to make greater distance but not having the skill to carry lots of overhang, is to teach the technique of carrying only as much line and as much overhang as the caster can easily handle with good tight loops when false casting. Then on the last back cast, shooting line back combined with a back drift. This results in the caster carrying successfully even more line and more overhang ON THAT ONE FINAL BACK CAST prior to making the delivery cast. Joan Wulff has honed this technique to perfection. I remember her teaching words well... "shoot a little on the forward cast; shoot a lot on the back cast....".
The amount of line carried on that last back cast has a mathematical relation to the amount of line you can shoot on your presentation cast. For intermediate and moderately long casts, you can shoot about 50% of the line carried ... no more. (As Jeff Wagner has pointed out, this rough formula changes for short casts and very long distance casts.)
I discussed Lefty's incredible tight loops with Bruce Richards one day. Bruce wondered if this might be an optical illusion produced by the off horizontal rod plane and a loop in the same plane seen as tighter from the side. I, then, lay on the ground as Lefty made these loops and noted them to be just as tight.
Steve Rajeff sharpens his loop shape with a perfectly timed thrust in an upward-outward direction with split second timing very close to the RSP. This appears, also, to minimize the effect of counterflex and rebound which may well contribute to the lack of waves in his line. He has near perfect tracking.
Gordy