• Do not exceed the recommend line rating or drag rating for your rod.
• Never ‘High Stick’ your rod – Over bending your rod when fighting or landing a fish is commonly referred to high sticking. Always maintain a maximum load angle of 45 – 60 degrees when fighting a fish and these parameters should never be exceeded.
• If your lure or rig becomes snagged always keep the rod pointed towards the snag and walk backwards keeping tension on the line. More than likely you will lose your tackle, but you cannot break your rod with this procedure.
• Like a diamond, carbon fibre rods are incredibly strong but can be brittle – Be careful not to drop or hit them on hard surfaces. It may also seem a bit obvious, but many expensive rods have been damaged by ceiling fans and car doors.
• Fishing rods are designed to evenly distribute the stress over the entire rod blank – Never place your hand high above the reel seat to assist the rod, as this will increase stress and cause the rod to break. Always maintain a maximum load angle of 45 – 60 degrees and never high stick it.
• Graphite carbon rods are excellent conductors of electricity – Never use a carbon fibre fishing rod during an electrical storm or near power lines.
• After using your fishing rod in a saltwater environment, always wash your rod well with fresh clean water as soon as you can and pay attention to the guide rings and reel seat. You can use apply light reel grease on the guide metal – but use it sparingly.
• Use caution when transporting your rod and always disassemble it and place the rod in the rod case during transport.
• Use caution when winding your line in and never pull the swivel through the guide tip as this will damage the guide ring.
• Check all guide rings for hair line cracks or chips – replace immediately if damaged

 

1. Choose a rod shorter than you use for open water fishing. While you can ice fish with a rod the same length as you normally use for open water fishing, most fishermen prefer to use a shorter rod; since baits are dropped through holes bored in the ice rather than cast, the extra length isn't necessary. A shorter rod is also an advantage in the tight quarters of most ice fishing shacks. A typical ice fishing rod is 3 to 4 feet (0.9 to 1.2 m) in length and thinner overall than a rod used for open water fishing.

2.Choose a sensitive rod. Because fish move more slowly in cold water, they usually do not hit baits or artificial lures as aggressively as they do in warmer water. You'll want a rod made from graphite or boron fiber to better help you sense the light taps you're likely to feel when a fish takes your bait.

​​1. Use tiny jigs for panfish. Bluegill, crappie, and other panfish eat tiny insects and plankton during the winter months. Jigs of 1/16 ounce (1.77 g) or less simulate these tiny food items.

• Some ice fishing jigs more closely resemble the flies used in fly fishing and are called ice flies.

2. Use tiny spoons for larger game fish species. Spoons wobble and flash their way through the water as they are retrieved, attracting bass, walleye, trout, and pike. Like jigs, they are typically fished in an up-and-down motion when ice fishing.

• Some fishermen take the treble hook off the spoon and attach a short leader in its place, to which they attach a jig. This setup attracts perch and other panfish.

3. Try swimming lures for a different presentation. Made of metal, swimming lures for ice fishing are thin and flat, with a fluke at one end to give them a swimming motion. The eye of the lure, however, is typically opposite a treble hook in the center of the lure body, with single hooks projecting from the front and rear.
4. Consider sweetening your lure with some live bait. Although ice fishermen more commonly use live bait when fishing with tip-ups, some add tiny minnows to swimming lures or small pieces of fish underbelly meat to a spoon. The fish meat adds a natural smell and taste that the artificial lure alone can't provide and makes finicky fish more likely to take the bait.
5. Add a spring bobber for a more fluid lure or bait action. A spring bobber is a small bobber that attaches to the line by means of a spring wound around one of its projections. The bobber's buoyancy helps to smooth out the jerkiness of jigging small jigs, spoons, and swimming lures up and down and also helps detect when fish take the bait. This aspect can be useful when wearing gloves while fishing or in other situations where it's necessary to rely on sight instead of touch to detect when you have a bite.

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By Massimo Magliocco 

Being a fly rod designer for many years, I want to give some advice to those who have to buy a fly rod. One of the elements that often make the neophyte "crazy" but also the expert fisherman, is to understand if a rod has the right features to make it a good fly rod. Questions like these: "what kind of features has to have a 9' rod to fish in a creek ? Or "which rod is the best ?" and so on. It is easy to read it everywhere.

Who knows me, knows that I was lucky to have two masters who have taught me so much about fly rods, one is Aldo Silva who is the greatest Italian expert regarding how to make a fly rod. He knows everything about carbons and resines and what is the best way to combine them together. The other one is Roberto Pragliola a big name about Italian fly casting technique who was my master too. He is the greatest expert in Italy regarding the connection between rod and cast.

Having had in these last fifteen years these two "masters" as friends with whom I spent a lot of time to talk about rods and also experiment on them, I behaved like a sponge absorbing all that both, separately, they explained me understanding all details about rods conception. So one day I started putting everything learned together and get a thorough understanding on the subject concerning fly rods. So let's see how we can understand if a fly rod works well for our needs.

The first elements to be evaluated are:
1) Where and what type of fishing we want to do
2) What weight of line we want to use
3) Choice of rod length

Many fishermen orient themselves on brands that they know or choose a rod that has a beautiful cosmetic. In these cases, a first mistake is often made because the choices are made emotionally and not analyzing the rod quality.

From a dynamic point of view, it is necessary to know well what are the three components that delineate a rod's features, they are:
1) rapidity
2) power
3) action, (the most important one)

These components have a priority in relation to the various types of rods, in other words one component is more important in a short rod, another in a long one and so on.

The rapidity is nothing more than the time that a rod has to return to the initial position, in a more or less short time, after giving it a thrust.  One rod will be faster than another one if this time is lower than the other.

In the modern casting style, rapidity has great importance since this involves very fast casting operations. Hence a tool that adapts better to the operations of the cast and that is able to greatly speed up the line, this last very important element.

It is clear that the rapidity alone is not enough since it must be added to the other component, the action, even if both of them work together. This is a concept that we will see later.

For longer rods which are designed to be able to cast heavier lines, the rapidity will be less pronounced since the most important element will be the power.

In fact, a long rod calibrated to cast lines weight 8 - 9 and more, must necessarily have very different casting timing than a shorter rod as well as being more powerful for obvious reasons. The power of a rod is the element that characterizes its strength.  

In other words, the energy that a rod can accumulate and then return during the cast, can be defined as power.

The third component, the action, has a great importance in a rod because being the curve of the rod when it is loaded, inevitably also affects the other two. In fact a rod has its rapidity and its power, but both must submit the action because a rod will not be speed if it has parabolic action, or it may not be powerful if it has a tip action.
​
Nowadays casting technique has inevitably produced an evolution of the equipment and first of all of the curves.

A curve for a fast rod, must be built with material that facilitates this feature, and besides must be progressive, a generic word that many fishermen cannot understand. This means that this kind of curve takes shape proportionally to the weight of the line out of the tip of the rod.

What does this mean ? It means that with a little line out the tip of the rod, only the tip gets curved, but increasing the line out of the tip, the curve will increase progressively. This will give the line a constant increase in speed which is our goal.

That said, how do we test a rod to evaluate its features ?
​
Let see it 

​Tighten the handle of the rod with one hand and with the other hand push the palm on the butt going, at the same time, from the cork to the stripping guide.  Discard all those rods that have a stiff butt that does not bend and those rods with the butt too soft that goes down suddenly. The right butt is the one that bends under the palm but with a little difficulty. The butt is the most important part of the rod. This is the first test that must be done but this is not enough. We must continue with the tests. For example, if a rod is line weight 3, we must test it with line weight 2 and line weight 4.
The rod will have to load with both lines, but it will be with the weight 3 that the rod will give the best results.
If this does not happen it means that the rod has not been calibrated well from the factory.

​Then we test the tip. For this test we use a line weight 3, 5 meters' leader, 2 meters' line out of the tip. We will only do the false casts and we will have to feel that the tip loads well and we will have to see a good shape of the loop and the leader will be stretched.
If this not happened the tip wasn't work well. Usually in this case it is too soft so we have to discard the rod.
We have already done the test of the butt with the palm of the hand, now we have to test it with a cast. I know that many fishermen do not know casts used to load the butt, for example the low parallel cast or the superimposed cast, and this does not allow them to test the butt, who wants can read how to do this cast here: http: //www.massimomagliocco .co.uk / index.php / 232-2 /
Finally, remember to avoid buying a rod only for its cosmetic or for its blazoned name.
These two elements can be important but you must remember that they cannot be so important as the action. Fly fishing is a beautifull technique but the most important element to get it fantastic is to cast in the best way, but to do it you have to have a good rod. So, let me finish with a my saying "you can't forget that you can have the best fly tied with the best materials but if you cannot put it in the right place and in the best way, then it no serves purpose.  

Perhaps nothing you do while you're fishing puts you under as much pressure as netting someone else's fish, especially if you are in a tournament. If you have to make several tries, or if you accidentally enable the fish to escape, you'll never be allowed to forget it. Know how to scoop up Mr. Fish before you go out.

1. Be prepared to be netting for someone else. Most of the time when a net is required, you will be netting for someone else. When your partner gets a fish on, be ready to drop what you are doing and get the net.

2. Reel your own line in as quickly as you can. If you just set the rod down, you are going to lose it.​

7. Turn the net so that it offers the largest possible entry to the fish.

9. Bring the net into the boat. Don't place it on the front or back deck where the fish could get back into the water with a single leap. The bottom of the boat is much safer

Choosing a fishing rod may seem overwhelming, but selecting the right rod is no different from finding the right pair of shoes.  Depending on what kind of fishing you will be doing, there are many parameters to help guide you towards the right fishing rod for your lifestyle. Ultimately, fishing rods come in so many models and styles because each is designed for a different kind of fisherman. Figure out what fishing rod is best for you based on your specific needs, and you will be on your way to making a quality purchase.

Article by Joe Cermele    Photograph by Joe Cermele

Just because the sun goes down doesn’t mean the species you love to catch go to bed. In fact, sometimes the biggest fish in the pond, lake, or river don’t eat at all until nightfall. Catching them past sunset requires some minor tweaks to your daytime tactics. These three will get you startednight stalking.
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BassBoth largemouths and smallmouths stay active all night, especially when there’s a full moon to shed some light. Aside from planning an attack around the lunar calendar, fishing after dark is a prime time to bust a heavy bucket­mouth or bronze­back on the surface. Opt for lures like the Jitterbug, which makes a lot of noise as it’s slowly retrieved. The slower the retrieve, the more time a bass has to track and smack the lure. Be sure to give the fish a chance to turn and dive before setting the hook.
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TroutBig brown trout will hunker down all day and go on the feed after sundown. Now is the time to throwlarge streamers and stickbaits in dark colors. Remember that at night, fish see lure profiles, not colors, and dark colors produce better silhouettes. Stickbaits that rattle, and streamers with bulkier hair heads, will produce more vibration under­water, making it easier for big trout to home in. Work in slow twitches and strips, and set on any tap.
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PanfishBluegills and crappies will happily chow down in the dark, especially near a light source. Light attracts small baitfish and bugs, providing a late-night feast for panfish. Fixed dock lights are magnets, but if you can’t find one, pick up a portable floating light designed specifically for nighttime crappie fishing. Once you attract some bait to the light, work jigs from outside the range of the glow to inside. The biggest panfish often hang out just beyond the light’s reach.