Kilsong's Cow Tuna fighting technique

[maxpowers]

Here is a video of Kilsong's innovative fighting technique for catching cow tuna without a harness or belt.  Looks counterintuitive and kinda strange but he claimed it help him land big fish even with a bad back.

[harryk3616]

i wonder if the built the rod that way with the guides on the side and bottom, the first guide closest to the reel is on the top, but the others are on the side, i don't think the rod is twisted.

[Jonnybravo]

That technique of rod wrapping is called spiral wrapping(or sometimes acid wrapped).  It reduces the natural tendency for the rod to want to twist on you under heavy load.  As far as Kilsong's technique, I think it's really smart. Push and pulling like he does will reduce your back straining.  I've got to try that.

i wonder if the built the rod that way with the guides on the side and bottom, the first guide closest to the reel is on the top, but the others are on the side, i don't think the rod is twisted.

[Keta]

i wonder if the built the rod that way with the guides on the side and bottom, the first guide closest to the reel is on the top, but the others are on the side, i don't think the rod is twisted.

I'm slowly converting most of my rods to spiral wrap.

[Bucktail]

It looks like a good technique if you're fighting fish from a boat with a high rail, but I don't think it would be that easy on a boat with a low gunwale.

[whalebreath]

It looks like a good technique if you're fighting fish from a boat with a high rail, but I don't think it would be that easy on a boat with a low gunwale.

Yes and he's the right height for that rail so it all comes together.

I note that the fish is fighting the reel more than the rod.

[erikpowell]

Ahh, so  that's Mr. Kilsong... I had him figured for a younger guy... as for the technique, well, it seems to work and make sense.
whale breath is right, I see the fish directly fighting drag and not so much the rod.
I'm going to try it...
coincidently, I'm not fishing today with the boys cause my back is killing me this morning 

[maxpowers]

well i wanted some numbers to match with what kilsong was showing in the video.  First I set the lever drag on my squall 2 speed to almost 11 lbs.  This was measured by steadily pulling looped braided line horizontally on a digital luggage scale.  Next the i hooked one end of the scale to the wall and about 5 feet of line from the rod tip and start walking backward with the the rod horizontally until the line started slipping.  my observer read the sale at almost 11 lbs.  reeling the line back to 5 feet i put a 20 - 30 degrees bend in the rod and started walking backward until the line started slipping.  The scale read 11.5 lbs.  Reeled the line back to 5 feet and put a 45 degrees bend in the rod.  It is getting progressively harder to keep the rod bent at this angle as I start ed walking backward.  I got a reading of 10.7 lbs.  Tried 60 to 70 degrees bend and it was tortured to hold the rod at that angle let alone tried to walk backward.  I couldn't do it and the scale was read at 9 lbs.  What this is telling me is that the fish at the end of the line is feeling the most pressure at somewhere between horizontal (all reel's drag) to a very small bend in the rod.  It also was much less taxing on the angler to exert pressure on the fish. The higher the rod angle relative to the line the more at a disadvantage the angler is relative to the fish.  Counter-intutitve indeed.  All this time I thought by fishing the rod at around 45 degrees angle I was putting the most pressure on the fish without undue stress on the rod when in reality the stress was on me as the fish never felt the added pressure that I felt.

[Tightlines667]

I think once you pass 45 deg the numbers start working in your favor again, and don't discount the size of the effective lever.  The more your rod bends, the shorter your effective lever.  When leadering big fish, keeping the line at a nearly perfect 90 deg angle, and keeping the hands close to the body provides the best leverage, control, and power..while still allowing for greater response when needed.  Also bear in mind, that It's easier to hold weight vertically then horizontally as well.  I'm not sure I've got all this rod physics stuff worked out myself, just a few thoughts.

[maxpowers]

I think once you pass 45 deg the numbers start working in your favor again, and don't discount the size of the effective lever.  The more your rod bends, the shorter your effective lever.  When leadering big fish, keeping the line at a nearly perfect 90 deg angle, and keeping the hands close to the body provides the best leverage, control, and power..while still allowing for greater response when needed.  Also bear in mind, that It's easier to hold weight vertically then horizontally as well.  I'm not sure I've got all this rod physics stuff worked out myself, just a few thoughts.

the scale was hooked onto a hook screwed into the wall.  I wanted to keep everything as constant as possible with the exception of the rod angle relative to the fixed point of the scale.  It is just showing that a lot of angler effort is / was wasted when we take the rod to too high of an angle relative to the fish.  What we felt at our end translated to much lower force on the fish than we thought.  When setting the drag at 45 degrees rod angles prior to fishing, we may get a feeling of a lot of drag on the other end but until a scale is actually hooked up we never knew.  I bet if you held a rod at 45 degrees and set your drag at what you think is say 15 lbs, you may be surprised that a scale put at the end of the line may only come back with 7 lbs or so; therefore the fish is only feeling 7 lbs of drag plus the line weight.

[jurelometer]

I think once you pass 45 deg the numbers start working in your favor again, and don't discount the size of the effective lever.  The more your rod bends, the shorter your effective lever.  When leadering big fish, keeping the line at a nearly perfect 90 deg angle, and keeping the hands close to the body provides the best leverage, control, and power..while still allowing for greater response when needed.  Also bear in mind, that It's easier to hold weight vertically then horizontally as well.  I'm not sure I've got all this rod physics stuff worked out myself, just a few thoughts.

the scale was hooked onto a hook screwed into the wall.  I wanted to keep everything as constant as possible with the exception of the rod angle relative to the fixed point of the scale.  It is just showing that a lot of angler effort is / was wasted when we take the rod to too high of an angle relative to the fish.  What we felt at our end translated to much lower force on the fish than we thought.  When setting the drag at 45 degrees rod angles prior to fishing, we may get a feeling of a lot of drag on the other end but until a scale is actually hooked up we never knew.  I bet if you held a rod at 45 degrees and set your drag at what you think is say 15 lbs, you may be surprised that a scale put at the end of the line may only come back with 7 lbs or so; therefore the fish is only feeling 7 lbs of drag plus the line weight.

Ooh, one of my favorite topics-   Learned all this the hard way

A good trick to teach people how to play big fish on a fly rod is to have them stand on a picnic table with a fly rod and try different rod angles  to lift a weight (about 3-5 lbs for a 10-12 wt rod).

The rod is a lever.  It always gives the fish better leverage until you point right at it.  At perpendicular, the lever is longest and provides the the most advantage (to the fish).  Every time you double the length of the lever, you double the the amount of leverage the fish has.   The way most people fish, the fulcrum is all the way at the rod butt. The farther you reach up the rod  the better your leverage- ignoring any ergonomic issues at the moment.  

So lets say you held a an 8 foot rod in a gimbal belt  with your lifting hand at 2-feet from the butt, pulling on a a 90 degree angle.   If the rod doers not bend at all the fish would need 2/8 the force to match what you are applying - you are even with the fish when you are pulling at 4 lbs and the the fish is pulling at 1 lb (ignoring rod bend and line friction for now).

Rod bending shortens the lever, but a "bendy" rod has a rubber band effect, where it becomes hard to apply lift.  Blue water fly fishing runs into this problem big time- very long and bendy rods.   One personality (Stu Apte?) actually walks back and forth on the deck  with just a little bend in the rod.  For tuna on the fly, I like to do a variation of the point-and-wind. I pull the reel in toward my body and then wind as I relax and extend the rod tip and reel  toward the fish.  When the fish gets near the boat, the rod can now be used to provide shock absorption and to steer/control the fish as Tightlines has pointed out.

I think you guys have it right in that the reason people put a lot of bend in the rod is that the feedback is counter-intuitive- you feel like you are pulling harder, but the fish feels the same or less force.

Now here is the kicker: Line moving through the water creates friction.  Pulling line sideways through the water generates a huge amount of friction- requiring force to overcome it.  There is nearly always bow in the line.  So when you pull on the line, you need to overcome the mostly lateral frictional force before the fish feels any (axial) pressure.  The greater/longer the bow, the more the friction.   The inverse is that before you feel any pressure on the rod and a reel, the fish has to overcome this same lateral force.   This a is why old time big game fishers follow the line and not the fish when backing down (don't fight to the bow!), and why the typical drag setting is only one third of the test (drag wont feel a thing until the fish overcomes the friction).  I don't have the numbers handy, but the amount of force required to overcome the friction of a decent sized bow is surprising.  A lot of what keeps a fish from breaking off in this situation is the elasticity of the the bow effect.

So perversely, you can actually apply more force with thinner line.  You won't be pulling harder, but the fish will feel more of it.  If you want to apply the most force to the fish with the least force to yourself- you point the rod to the fish, and use shortest topshot and  thinnest gel-spun (spectra) backing that you can get away with.   OTOH line bow can be your friend in open water.  It will wear out an active fish while you relax with a cold beverage.  

Jurelometer

[day0ne]

If you look at this video at about 1:30, there is a very good example of Kil's style

[maxpowers]

Dayone,

Thanks for the video post.  I couldn't help but saw how easy he was fighting the Goliath Grouper.  At one point in the video as he was moving across the rail after his fish, he was able to hold the rod with one hand while using his free hand to clear a rod in the holder.  That's just incredible to see.

[Ron Jones]

While I understand the physics, experience tells me that bending a rod enough stops the fish. The quickest way to slow a run without fiddling with the drag is to lift the rod until the bend is enough to stop the fish. I could not begin to count the number of times I have done this and I have seen others do it. I am not someone who regularly measures drag. I just use enough drag, which is the absolute minimum necessary, and fight the fish with the rod.

The rod brings the fish in, the reel holds the line.
Ron

[basto]

So those JIGGING MASTER reels seem to be OK.