Why Holding Your Rod Tip Up Or Down Makes A Big Difference
- By: Luke Simonds
- on February 22, 2021
Here’s a small detail that could make a big difference in how many fish you catch:
Retrieving your lure with your rod tip up or down.
It could change how deep your lure is swimming, or how well you can feel a strike and set the hook.
These minor changes could help you catch a lot more fish, and to see when to fish with your rod tip up or down, check out the video below.
Fishing With Your Rod Tip Up Or Down [VIDEO]
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The position of your rod tip affects mostly two things:
- How deep your lure is swimming
- How well you’re able to feel the strikes
Let’s talk about depth control first.
Using Your Fishing Rod To Control Lure Depth
Holding your rod tip up or down could cause your lure to swim about a foot or so deeper or shallower.
If the water is cold, you’ll definitely want your lure to swim closer to the bottom because that’s where the fish are holding.
Since they’re probably not likely to move very far to hit a lure, if yours is a foot out of their comfort zone, you probably won’t catch them.
On the other hand, if you’re fishing in shallow water and your lure is dragging on the bottom, holding your rod tip up can get it swimming just above it.
And if you’re fishing a flat with a pothole, you might hold your rod tip up as you’re dragging your lure across the flat, then down as you swim it through the deeper pothole, then back up once it comes back onto the flat.
These small changes in depth can lead to huge gains in how many fish you catch.
Using Your Fishing Rod To Feel Strikes
The position of your rod tip can also determine how well you feel strikes.
If you’re fishing on a windy day perpendicular to the wind, holding your rod tip up high exposes your line to the wind.
The wind could put a bow in your line and make it much more difficult to feel strikes.
In this scenario, you’d want to keep your rod tip close to the surface so it’s less exposed to the wind.
But if you’re fishing with the wind behind you, it won’t matter as much, so you can use your rod tip to focus on depth control.
Conclusion
Your rod tip position matters more than most people think.
Holding it higher or lower can affect how deep your lure is swimming, and on windy days holding it low can keep your line from being bowed out by the wind.
Feeling strikes better and keeping your lure in the strike zone are two things that can definitely help you catch more fish.
Have any questions about how to hold your rod when retrieving lures?
Let me know down in the comments.
And if you know someone who needs to see this tip, please TAG or SHARE this with them!
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I am throwing this onto the community as well, but what about rod tip position after the strike? I have been told always keep the tip up.
Yes, keeping it up is smart because that helps keep the line up away from any potential structure on the bottom. The situation where you definitely do not want your rod up is when a fish is making a run under mangrove overhangs… in that case, keeping the rod tide down is an advantage since it helps keep the line away from the overhanging limbs.
If you hold your spinning rod upside down, you’ll be given a one-time correction notice as a courtesy. After the correction notice, if you’re documented again to be holding your spinning rod upside down, you’ll immediately be billed for and sent a googan hat and shirt that you must wear for a year. 🙂
What rod are you using
I was using a 7’6″ TFO Professional Medium power rod… one of my all-time favorites: https://fishstrong.com/collections/saltwater-rods/products/tfo-tfg-professional-rod?variant=32731200913493
Luke,
I have been meaning to ask you about a 7 ft spinning rod.
For accurate casting a lure, what rod would you recommend, the reason I say 7 ft only is because my
cabinet was made for 7 ft rods.
I do seem to have a problem casting accurately. Also I wonder if you could do a video on accurate casting.
I use a Falcon SS-7M 8-17 line 1/4 to 1/2
Thanks
Jerry Dexter
Hey Jerry, I use 7’6″ rods 99% of the time because I like the blend of casting distance and control that they have. But 7′ rods can certainly get the job done too… it mostly just comes down to learning a good casting technique and then practicing it.
Here’s the casting technique that I’ve found to help me get good accuracy while enabling long casts too: https://www.saltstrong.com/articles/dart-cast-tutorial/
It’s insane how the little things make such a difference in fishing but if everything was easy and perfect the sport would get pretty boring there would be no challenge and there would also be way to many anglers all catching and soon the species everywhere would be shortly depleted and the ones that would get away would be much to wise to catch but that’s why god made everything that is worth something have to be obtained with hard work with some mistakes and never perfect that way we learn and appreciate it more along the way thanks Luke great advice as always and as usual thanks for all you do works for me😁
Thanks so much for making time to post the nice comment Steven!
Excellent info Luke, my old fishing buddy wouldn’t even try side casting or low rod technique. He has resigned himself to fishing with Shrimp only with his wife. Line control is vital !!!! Thanks for the info & I’m worried about Joe losing his VOICE !!!!
Haha! I’m sure that Joe will more than make up for his silence in the next video:)
Excellent information. Thank you!
Thanks so much for making time to post the nice comment Dana!
I would add…regardless of whether your retrieve is rod tip down or rod tip up; and especially if you are throwing a jig or weedless rig with the hook facing up; the first move on the hook set needs to be UP, not forward. I see a lot of inexperienced anglers trying to set the hook by pulling the lure the direction of the retrieve, which greatly increases the chance of a poor hook set or miss altogether.
Thanks for making time to leave the helpful comment David!
Thanks for your informative videos! Has really helped me to enjoy fishing more!
Our pleasure Lou!
You really need to give Luke a microphone.
Could you not hear what I was saying?
It was loud and clear on my end!🤷🏻♀️
Sounded fine to me.
My guess is that it has something to do with a right or left speaker… one of our voices is coming from one side while the other is from the other side.
Luke’s on the left speaker, Joe’s on the right.