Good Question... You'll hear the phrase "Get him on the reel" many times from guides and pro's alike. Why? First take into account your fishing situation. If you hand retreive, slack-line snag-ups are the biggest enemy, be it shrubs, stumps, driftwood, boat equipment, a wader loop, or something hanging off your vest. Loose line tends to seek out something to wrap itself around. If you are wading, tubing, kickboating, driftboating, shorefishing, you have to take into account what can happen to the slack line. If you are saltwater fishing, long casts sometimes require stripping baskets, as in the surf, or standing on a casting platform on the front of a flats boat, or on the back of a cruiser, or in the middle of a panga. Casting and hand-retreiving both leave you with slack ling to manage. Even the front of your shoes becomes a prime place for slack line to hang up. And a hung up line equals a bad cast or lost fish and fly.
Second, what size fish do you have on the business end? A good fish will at first put you 'on the reel' whether you like it or not, by taking up all your slack. Whether or not you go to hand retreive after that depends somewhat on the fish, persoanal preference, and #1. The advantage is on smaller fish, being able to keep more tension on the fish than you could manage cranking a 1:1 reel. I personally like the 'feel' of hand retreiving a fish, the feeling of direct contact to the fish with both hands. But the situation has to allow it, too. I almost exclusively hand retreive when fishing small trout- 5 pounds or less- while wading streams without snags. (Skip the rest if you're not a 'salty'... ) Now on big fish, especially saltwater game fish, the urge is to hand retrieve if the fish runs at you- bad idea. If you do hand retreive, it's a risky gamble, because when he turns and barrels away, all that slack line is looking for something to grab. And if you try to hold the slack line while a big salty runs at 50mph for 200 yards away from you, can you say "rope-burn"? The first accomplishment after hooking a saltwater brute is to get him on the reel. Don't give up this advantage by hand retreiving. And it's very hard, too, to hand retreive backing. It's not like holding the fly line. And backing will cut a finger to the bone in a heartbeat. Now once the fish is back on the fly line, and I have something to grab, I hold the line when the fish and I are at stalemates, neither giving or taking. Maximum pressure is being applied, and having the fly line in the free hand gives me a better feel for whether the fish is ready to give a little or take off. But not having slack is very crucial here. If he decides to bolt and he takes all slack in a heart beat, he may easily break the leader just on spool inertia, no matter how the drag is set. So what if he is 500 yards out and runs at you at 50 mph? If it's early in the fight, I don't bother trying to put the slack back on the reel- I just try to keep it tight. The line drag will hopefully keep him hooked up. And before you can reel in the slack, he's usually headed away again, taking it all back. Save your arm for later, you'll need it. So to sum it up, at least in my limited experience and IMHO, hand retreiving is at times beneficial and enjoyable, and at other times not. DonO ----- Original Message ----- From: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Sent: Wednesday, November 13, 2002 10:56 PM Subject: [VFB] Landing a fish - stripping vs. cranking > I've got a question to ask the list. Since I normally fish water which > holds a decent abundance of fish but very few large ones, I've gotten into > the habit of retrieving line by hand when bringing in a fish. Having spent > so many years fishing with spinning and baitcasting reels prior to picking > up on fly fishing, I don't really see any sort of mechanical advantage in > the use of a fly reel (at least not the lower-quality reel I've got on my > rod) since the drag is all but non-existant. Therefore, my reel is more or > less just a place to store my line when I'm not using it. > > I'd like to get an idea of what the generally used method is. If I've got > 15 or 20 feet of line laying in the water in front of me, do I really have > the time to take up all that slack on a reel with no mechanical advantage > (i.e. no improved gear ratios to speed the uptake)? Generally speaking, I > also fish the lightest tippet I have available - normally 7x or 8x. I've > never had a fish break off (although once or twice the fly has come untied, > but that problem is on me). > > Anyhow, whats the verdict? When a fish can be landed just as easily by > retrieving line by hand, do you all pull it in or reel it in? > > Thanks for any comments! > > John >
