Long Rod Short LineLong rod short line is an incredibly effective way to fish, and allows you to keep even most of your tippet off the water for exceptional drag-free drifts. With drag free drifts, you will catch more fish, except for one problem. To quote "The Curtis Creek Manifesto" Frightened fish can't be caught! With a longer rod, you can still fish a short line, but you can do it from further away, frightening fewer fish.
Would you fish a 14' 7" rod here?
What you'd catch if you did.
Even before I discovered tenkara, when I was still trying to recreate a British loop rod with a telescopic fiberglass crappie pole, I decided that I preferred using a relatively short line. I'd read that the appropriate line length for loop rods was about 1.5 times the rod length (which is about the line length that Daniel Galhardo of Tenkara USA has gravitated to with his longer tenkara rods). I started out with a line of that length, but decided to shorten it after I hooked my first big fish and couldn’t land it. I don’t know exactly how big it was because I never did get it into my net, but I did get it close enough to see that it is the only brown trout I’ve ever hooked that had a pronounced kype on its jaw. Unwilling to beach it on sharp rocks, I chose to hand line it before it was quite ready. My tippet popped about two seconds later. My next time out, and for the rest of that year and all the next, and until Dr. Ishigaki gave his presentation in the Catskills the year after that, I fished with a line about 3’ shorter than the rod, to which I added 4’ of tippet. I got great drifts and caught a lot of fish. I was definitely a convert to the long rod short line approach. When Dr. Ishigaki gave his presentation in the Catskills in May of 2009, he set me up with a line a foot longer than the rod, and a tippet of one meter or a bit longer. With the longer line, I had a harder time keeping it all off the water, but I was fishing further away, and caught fish in places I’d never caught fish before. Fishing further away does spook fewer fish, and I had kind of forgotten how surprisingly effective the long rod short line method is.
Seeing a comment Daniel made in one of his blog posts about fishing a tight stream with a 9’ line and 3’ of tippet on his 13’ Ayu, the memories of fishing the long rod short line style came back to me, along with the idea of fishing a much longer rod than I normally use, with a much shorter line. So, the second time out with my Ito, I fished it exclusively at its full 14’ 7” length, but used the line I normally would use with my 11’ Iwana. My line plus tippet was almost exactly the length of the rod. Well … I had the best day I’ve ever had (at least in terms of numbers of trout) and the only thing that kept me from solidly surpassing the 50 fish mark was that part of the time I was fishing barbless hooks. As an aside, anyone who does not lose more fish with barbless hooks is a better fisherman than I am – or at least catches larger fish. With the long rod short line, I would often skitter the small fish back along the water’s surface on the hookset, and an extremely large percentage of them wriggled off the hook. Most of the larger fish stayed under water on the hookset, and most of those made it into the net, but most of the 6 and 7 inchers didn’t.
A CDC & Elk with only a couple inches of tippet in the water fooled this brown.
As I was first rigging up, I saw two rises, one of which was right about where I was right about to enter the stream. So, I started with a CDC & Elk and slingshotted the cast from a good 8’ back on the bank. First cast, first fish. I didn’t keep that percentage up for the rest of the day, of course, but it really is amazing how effective it is to fish with just tippet in the water – and from far enough away that you don’t spook fish. For dry flies in particular, keeping even most of the tippet off the water will produce much better drifts, and much better drifts will produce many more fish. (I really should say many, many more fish.) I later switched to a killer bug and then a killer kebari, and the results were pretty much the same. Excellent drifts, excellent fishing. I gotta tell you, long rod short line.
The stream I fished is one on which I usually do well, but never that well. I also usually fish it with a 12’ rod. I’ve never even considered taking my Amago there because I always thought it was too long. Foolish me. I still won’t take it there, but only because the Ito is a better rod for the long rod, short line method – it’s longer! Plus, if you ever in a really tight location, you can shorten it to a modest 13 feet. There were times when I lifted the rod to bring in a fish and had overhead tree limbs in the way. That also happened years ago, before Tenkara USA, when I used a 10 crappie pole on the same stream. It is something you get used to quickly, though, and just wading a few steps one way or the other yielded sufficient room to fully raise the rod. I did get my line snagged a few times, and I did lose a few flies to trees, but no more than usual and much less that the first time I tried pesca alla Valsesiana, with its longer line and longer tippet carrying more flies. I think the factor that most contributes to snagging flies on your back cast is the length of the line, not the length of the rod. Shorter line, fewer snags. Although long line tenkara has adherents both in Japan and in the US, I would highly recommend trying some long rod short line tenkara as well. Use the longest rod you can get away with (although it should be at least a little shorter than the width of the stream) and a line that allows you to keep ALL your line and even most of your tippet off the water. A lighter line is better to minimize line sag. I found a size 3 level line to work better than a size 4 or than a hand tied line – this is a case where you do want the weight forward, and a
level line
is the ultimate weight forward line.
There were places I could touch the other bank with my rod tip
The long rod, short line method works!
Return from Long Rod Short Line to Tenkara Techniques
|
When I first fished with my new Ito I just assumed it was a rod for larger streams and longer lines. I caught a fish with a 20’ line and 4’ of tippet, and although it wasn’t nearly as large as the kype-jawed brown from several years ago, I still had trouble getting it into the net. It would just go to the bottom and sulk, but it did it close enough to me that I couldn’t put any pressure on the line. I had to start hand lining it before it was ready. Had it been a larger fish I don’t think I could have landed it.
