Striking Fish In Salt Water (9 of 12)

Fighting a big fish from a boat far offshore takes all your skill and a little luck. You never know what might happen so be prepared for anything. The aggressiveness of your strip strike should depend on the size of the fish and the strength of your tippet. For softer-mouth species like Striped Bass, Bluefish, or Dorado, it doesn't take much to set the hook. For fish with hard, boney mouths like Tarpon or Tuna, it helps to make a more aggressive strike by combining a long strip with a down and sideways movement of the butt of the rod. For the hard mouth species, as long as they don't immediately begin a screaming run, many fly fishers give the fish multiple jabs to make sure the hook is set firmly.

When you're saltwater fly fishing, it's important to keep that rod tip low, when you're stripping the fly and when you're striking the fish. You have more control over the line when the rod is low. When you want to strike a fish, it’s just one long strike, one long strip; it’s called a strip-strike. Once you feel the fish, then you can raise the rod tip and play the fish. If you do have problems with raising the rod tip as you would in trout fishing, because it’s a tough reflex to get out of, it's perfectly ok to put your rod tip down in the water. That way you keep that rod tip low and you can’t really strip-strike, you can't really raise that rod tip because you have resistance on the rod tip. So it really helps you to strip-strike.