A question that I frequently come across in Facebook groups and surf fishing forums is, “How long should surf rod holders be?”
This question is fairly legitimate. Rod holders play a crucial role in surf fishing and have a significant impact on fishermen’s productivity.
In a nutshell, their primary purpose is to free up your hands for other essential tasks. By placing your pole on a spike or rod holder, you can set up additional rods, fight a fish on another rod, or simply take a break and enjoy the crest of the waves.
Rod holders also contribute to your comfort, as carrying heavy surf rods all day long can be exhausting and uncomfortable.
But how long should surf fishing rod holders be?
Surf rod holders should ideally be between 4 and 5 ft long. This size range helps minimize the contact of your line with water, improving your stability in the surf zone. 3 ft rod holders can also suffice for beach fishing when targeting small fish or when you don’t need to cast so far.
Why so long?
Long rod holders provide several benefits for surf anglers.
The primary advantage is that the higher your rod’s tip, the less contact your line will have with the water, which helps minimize the pressure from heavy currents.
This offers you more stability and helps your bait to stay where you want it to be.
A short rod holder keeps your line at a close level to sea level, which exposes it to much pressure from water currents, hence hurting your stability.
Another advantage of long surf rod holders is that you can dig them deeper into the sand, which gives more stability to your rod.
As a good rule of thumb, you should always insert your spikes 1-2 ft into the sand. This is the necessary depth to prevent large fish from tipping over your pole and potentially dragging it to the surf.
This is especially helpful when a bite happens while battling a fish on another rod as it gives you more time to finish the fight and move on to the next one, increasing your chances of landing both catches successfully.
Pro tip: Using circle hooks and setting the drag properly can improve your chances even further in this situation. Circle hooks don’t require you to set the hook manually, and they tend to stay in the fish’s mouth like forever. On the other hand, a well-adjusted drag setting will limit the release of line, preventing the fish from stealing your entire spool while you’re busy with the other fish.
We have covered more tips and insights like this in our ebook “101 tips for surf fishing“. This is a complete beach fishing guide that will save you 2-3 years of research and trial and error. I encourage you to give it a look.
So these were the main advantages of a long surf casting rod holder. Worth noting here that you still need to choose a long surf rod to benefit from all this.
Putting a short pole on a long surf rod holder is like spinning your own wheels or beating the air.
Surf rods should not be shorter than 9ft with the ideal length being 10-12 ft. Combining this with a long rod holder is what yields the best results.
The best rod holder length for surf fishing
After discussing the different benefits you get from using a long surf rod holder, now comes the question of how long should it be.
Well, as mentioned earlier, you should dig the spike 1-2 feet into the sand for maximum stability. Therefore, you should have an additional 2-3 feet of length to keep the line high enough.
Consequently, the best rod holder length for surf fishing is 5-6 ft.
With 5-6 ft, you will still have a clean 4 ft after digging the rod holder. That’s perfect to reap the benefits we discussed above.
I wouldn’t mind using something taller than 6 feet, but when it comes to logistics, carrying rod holders that long can be quite inconvenient.
Also, putting and taking the rod from a 7ft holder is not an easy task for everybody. Shout out to short folks like me! 😀
What about 3ft rod holders?
Many sand spikes available in the market are only 3ft, which is much shorter than what we recommend here.
The issue with rod holders like this is that, after digging them into the sand, you won’t have enough length remaining to keep the rod tip at an optimal height.
This leads to many problems such as the lack of stability in the surf and the potential risk of losing the rod after a heavy strike.
So this is clearly not the most rewarding option.
I would only recommend such an option when not targeting large fish. This way, you can dig the holder a few inches into the sand and put your rod on it without worrying about heavy bites.
With this in mind, remember that you can never anticipate the size of fish you’ll catch when surf fishing. Even if your area is notorious for only small and medium-sized fish, don’t take that as a rule and assume that a large fish will never show up.
It only takes one large fish to lose your rod.
A possible workaround here is to loosen the drag, which comes with many disadvantages too.
Also, a possible use case for 3ft rod holders is when surf fishing a steep beach with sudden underwater drop-offs.
The first sandbar on such beaches is usually a few yards from the shoreline. Therefore, you can deploy your bait on good spots without the need to cast so far. This helps to keep the angle between the line and rod small, thus reducing the amount of line in contact with the water.
Conversely, gentle beaches where the sandbars develop over a large distance force you to cast far in order to reach strike zones, and that keeps the line at a wide angle, forcing it to have more contact with water turbulence.
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