COLUMN: NEWELL’S NOTES
patented postures
Some pros are clearly recognizable by their body language and style on the water
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
As a freelance writer and
photographer, Rob
Newell has been reporting
on fishing tournaments
for 20 years, finding the
stories between fish and
angler to be a stretched
line of heroes, heartache,
triumph, torture, inspiration
and exasperation.
T
o some people, all the
casting and reeling
that professional
anglers do looks the same. But
after you’ve watch thousands
of hours of pros casting and
reeling on the water over the
course of 20 years, you realize
every pro has his own fishing
posture, body language and
unique quirks. Some pros’
patented postures are so identifiable,
I thought I’d share
some of my favorites.
I’ll start with one of the
more pronounced fishing postures
in pro fishing: Andy
Morgan. Morgan is such a tall
fellow that when he holds a
flipping stick in his hand, it
looks more like a conductor’s
baton. As he pitches and then
catches the bait in his other
hand in rhythm, Morgan looks
like a band conductor orchestrating
a symphony. During an
FLW event on Chickamauga
years ago, Morgan tried to hide
from his competitors by borrowing
a non-wrapped boat
instead of using his own
wrapped boat. But once I spied
the “Incognito Conductor”
leading the symphony in the
back of a flooded pocket, I
knew exactly who it was.
From one tall Andy to
another, Andy Montgomery
also possesses a very unique
signature cast: the skip-cast.
Yes, I know, a lot of top pros
are proficient at skipping lures
into hard-to-reach areas. But
Montgomery’s version of the
skip-cast is on another level,
which makes him readily identifiable.
He fishes so fast that
the boat is usually moving at 3
to 4 mph as he skims lures like
flat rocks into dock crevices
the size of mouseholes.
Imagine being 6 feet, 4 inches
tall and trying to make a 20-
foot putt from a moving golf
cart. Montgomery does it hundreds
of times a day with a
fishing lure.
After covering many of
Mark Rose’s wins on the FLW
Tour over the years, I found
that his posture reminded me
of a Major League Baseball
pitcher. Before the windup,
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