Fishing - Letting the Rod do the Work

I am Captain Steve Chaconas, with National Bass Guide Service. Were teaching you how to cast a spinning rod, and now I am going to show you how important the rod can be and using that rod to help you cast. If you are casting left-handed, we have talked about casting off your left shoulder, well you can also cast off your right shoulder, if there is somebody standing to your left, you want to do that for safety reasons. So, you want to make a cast like this. If you are trying to underneath cover, you can cast off to the side, you can also cast off to the side this way, if you are right-handed same thing, grip the rod the same way that we showed you, bring the rod back off your right shoulder, either off your left shoulder, you can kind of backhand it this way, or forehand it this way low to keep it underneath cover. These are always great techniques to learn, you learn how to do these it will help you hit different angles and different spots, thats the equivalent of driving, if your are a golfer, if you are putting, you need to use close-in casting and for that we use the technique called pitching.

The first thing we do is we get the bait about even with the reel handle. We are going to go ahead and load it just like we normally would, get the roller bearing up near our index finger, open up the bail and now were are going to grip the bait above the bait on the line. To learn how to do this technique, what were going to do is put the rod horizontal, I always tuck it underneath my arm, just let the bait drop, you could feel it swing it away from you just let the bait drop. I am not moving anything else, I am not moving the rod, I am not loading up the rod, this is a self-correcting issue. If you accidentally let it go it will drive that hook into your finger. So, just hold it like this, let it go and it will swing away from you, were not going to push it out like that, we are not going to use our arms to get it out there, what were going to do is just hold the rod, drop the bait, let it swing away.

Once we have practiced that a couple of times, then we are going to lower the rod, raise the rod and now we have a lot more momentum, so that we can pitch this thing a lot further, it's a very close-in technique, so what we are going to do is really look to pick a very close-in target, release it, let it go and then we are ready to pitch. So again, lift up the rod, grab the line, lower the rod, lift the rod, release the bait and now you have made a pitch. Coming up next were going to teach you how to aim and the proper release for every cast.