Matching your surf rod to your casting style and personal preferences will foster consistency in your casting and catching.
Never has there been a time in sportfishing when the average angler was more ‘gear obsessed’ than right now, and I don’t think that upward trend is going to flatten out any time soon. We’ve reached a point where innovation and influence can work together to render older models obsolete at an alarming rate and the connectedness of manufacturers and consumers is so complete that the lines of communication are always open, if your ears and eyes are pointed in that direction.
This trend could be considered problematic for freshwater bass fishermen who are force-fed so much information from pros that they feel like they need a rod for every method and feel helpless when conditions call for a certain method and the ‘right’ rod for that method has been left at home in the rack. I’d find a way to use some other setup to deliver the chosen method of the day, but I’ve seen sponsored pros stifle tantrums on national broadcasts because they couldn’t possibly throw a frog with their flipping stick.
Luckily, surfcasting isn’t big enough to spawn a fortune 500 company – perhaps not yet – so innovation on our field of play moves at a slower rate, but that doesn’t mean it’s stationary. Innovation is a great thing for our sport and it gives us new tools, new tricks and new methods for catching more and bigger fish. The downside of living in the era of the influencer is actually a double-whammy; first of all, everyone with a YouTube Channel instantly thinks they’re an influencer and feels empowered to dole out advice that isn’t always rooted in the grime of experience. Secondly, those with more traction and experience often forget that there is difference between the words ‘favorite’ and ‘best’.
When it comes to surf rods the single, most important thing to keep in mind is that the best rod for you is the one that matches your casting style. In surfcasting we have this obsession with casting to the horizon and this has spawned an entire generation of rods that make it easier to cast further, even if you have questionable mechanics. These rods are fast and powerful with most of the bend coming in the upper third, but they leave something to be desired in the finesse department. They are fun to cast, you can snap your wrists and fire a frozen-rope cast that might draw a crowd, but they can be exhausting to fight a big fish on and they have a high tendency to pull or straighten hooks on big fish, because they offer zero forgiveness.
Then we have parabolic options that bend throughout the entire blank, forming a rounder arc. Put one of these in the hands of a caster who’s been using one of these ‘distance first’ rods and you might compare the experience to watching Shohei Ohtani try to hit a knuckleball with a 12-foot section of garden hose. A parabolic rod will expose poor mechanics, but they will also reward sound mechanics with casts that might rival an average caster’s fling with a high-trajectory stick. The true benefits of a parabolic surf rod come when fighting a large fish; they offer tons of ‘give’ making it much harder for the fish throw or mangle hooks, and they make the fish work a lot harder, making it easier to ‘whip’ a powerful fish in a shorter period of time.
So, we have two choices: we can cater to our casting style or we can take the time to learn how to use the rod that fits our priorities. It is an absolute fact that a wristy caster can learn to cast a parabolic rod and it is also a fact that a good fisherman can learn to battle a giant on a fast rod. It all has to do with you. I used to fish fast rods because I was a wristy caster, I also had a wristy baseball swing and I truly think one spawned the other. I made a decision to master more parabolic rods when started finding bigger fish more consistently because I was losing fish and straightening hooks. Since I have made that switch, my landing of larger fish has gone way up. But it was a process teaching myself all new casting mechanics.
When you set out to choose your next surf rod, match it to your casting style, don’t just grab the one your favorite influencer says is the best. Taking it another step, try to make sure that all of your rods – from schoolie stick, to your springtime 9-footer, to your daily driver, are all similar in action. This will breed consistency in your casting style and fish-fighting abilities, and keeping things consistent allows you to concentrate on other, more important things, when you find yourself with enough time to catch a tide in the surf.
