Practicing good rod handling technique by Mick Underwood

As a fishing guide I get no points at all for having people on my boat not catch fish. It's one thing for me to go out onto the ocean each day with a group of keen anglers, find some nice fish and whip them up into a frenzy. But to then have the crew onboard fail to get fish after fish to the boat is obviously not desirable.
This can be due to a whole bunch of reasons, but often it's due to poor rod handling techniques. If this happens I end up with a boat load of frustrated anglers, which isn't exactly ideal.
You can refer to someone in my position as a charter skipper or guide, but I consider my job to be more that of a sportfishing teacher. It is necessary for me to assume this role in order to consistently get good fish to the boat. The guide part to the job is at the beginning of each session where I take the boat and clients out to some location and do my best to find a pile of big, active and hungry fish. Once the fish are found, the guiding is finished. From that moment on I am a teacher - continuously talking to and assisting the crew onboard on how to firstly hook the targeted fish, keep that fish on the hook, and then to do whatever is necessary to get that particular fish to the side of the boat.
These rod handling skills and techniques can be applied when targeting any fish by any means at any water. It doesn't matter whether you're throwing a dry fly at a high country trout, dropping a jig down to a kingfish or casting stickbaits at flathead, the basic fundamentals of using a fishing rod don't change.
I am now going to take some time to share with you in print what I share with people verbally every day. I hope that you get something out of it and that it assists you in some way with your future angling endeavours.
First up, a little bit of history that I feel is highly relevant to this whole subject. I'm sure that you have all heard our magnificent sport being referred to as angling and those of us that indulge in it as 'anglers'. The term 'angling' derives from using a rod and line to create and use effective angles in order to get a fish to the net as efficiently as possible. With the exception of the next paragraph or two, the whole guts of this article will be talking about creating and using the correct angles required to fight fish effectively.