Tom Rowland Podcast Episode 545 is my conversation with Capt. Jeff Malone, a full-time charter captain who runs two boats year-round and spends his days teaching anglers how to actually fight a big fish. Most of landing tarpon and other heavy fish comes down to technique people never learn. We break down drag control, the lift-and-reel cadence, palming the spool, and preventing tip wraps, the fundamentals that decide whether the fish ends up at the boat or gone.
Capt. Jeff Malone is a full-time charter captain who runs two boats year-round. He is known for teaching anglers the proper techniques for fighting big fish, including drag control and rod work, and for getting clients onto and connected with challenging species like tarpon.
Capt. Jeff Malone teaches a lift-and-reel cadence: you pull the rod up to gain line, then reel down as you drop the tip, repeating the cycle. Combined with correct drag control and good rod angles, this technique lets you apply steady pressure and tire the fish without breaking off.
Drag control is central to Malone's approach. Setting and managing the drag correctly, and knowing when to add or back off pressure during the fight, is what keeps you connected to powerful fish and prevents the sudden surges that cause break-offs.
Palming the spool means applying pressure with your hand against the reel's spool to add drag during the fight, beyond what the drag setting provides. Capt. Jeff Malone uses it as a way to control big fish in key moments, but it has to be done carefully to avoid breaking the line.
Tip wraps happen when the line wraps around the rod tip and can cause an instant break-off. Malone teaches rod positioning and angle awareness during the fight to keep the line clear of the tip, especially during the close-quarters battle near the boat.
Tom Rowland Podcast Episode 545 with Capt. Jeff Malone is available on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, and wherever you get your podcasts. The video version is embedded at the top of this page.
I wanted Jeff on because fighting big fish is where most anglers lose them, and almost nobody teaches the technique well. Jeff runs two boats year-round and watches people make the same mistakes every day, so he has the fundamentals down to a science. Drag, rod angle, palming the spool, tip wraps, these are the details that separate landing a tarpon from a heartbreaking break-off. I wanted listeners to learn it from someone who teaches it constantly.
Press play in the player above to hear it.
Jeff breaks down pulling up to gain line and reeling down as you drop the tip, the rhythm that tires a fish without breaking it off. It sounds simple and most people get it wrong. Hear it in the episode.
Drag control is the heart of Jeff's method. He explains how to set it, when to add pressure, and when to back off so a big fish does not break you. Watch the YouTube player above.
Palming the spool adds pressure in key moments, but done wrong it costs you the fish. Jeff explains how and when he uses it. Listen to that section.
A tip wrap can break you off instantly at the worst possible moment. Jeff teaches the rod positioning that keeps your line clear, especially boatside. Hear it in the full episode.
The day after talking with Jeff, what stuck with me was how many fish are lost to fundamentals people never learned. The fight is a skill, and most anglers treat it like luck.
Jeff makes it teachable. Drag, cadence, palming the spool, tip wraps, these are things you can practice and improve. If you want to stop losing big fish, this conversation is a clinic.
The Tom Rowland Podcast brings you long-form conversations with the most accomplished anglers, hunters, conservationists, and outdoor professionals in the game. Listen to every full-length Tom Rowland Podcast interview.
Capt. Jeff Malone is a full-time charter captain who runs two boats year-round. He has built a reputation for teaching anglers the proper techniques for fighting big fish, including drag control, the lift-and-reel cadence, palming the spool, and preventing tip wraps. His instruction focuses on the fundamentals that determine whether anglers land powerful species like tarpon or lose them, making him a go-to resource for clients who want to improve their fish-fighting skills.
Full transcript of the Tom Rowland Podcast, Episode 545, featuring Captain Jeff Malone...
In this How 2 Tuesday segment, Tom Rowland sits down with Captain Jeff Malone of Hawks Cay to talk about fighting big fish the right way, covering drag settings, rod technique, and the common mistakes anglers make when a fish is on the line.
Tom Rowland: What's going on, everybody? It's How 2 Tuesday. I've got my good friend, Captain Jeff Malone, from the docks of Hawks Cay. He's on, and we're gonna talk about reeling against the drag. No guy likes to hear that going on. Jeff, what do you tell your customers about reeling against the drag? How do you teach them how to fight a fish properly?
Jeff Malone: Well, I try to just explain that the fish needs to fight against the drag and against the rod. So often when I see someone reeling against the drag, I know that they're also exerting too much energy and gaining absolutely nothing. So I preach to them that you lift up slow and reel down quickly. That way you're trying not to pull line off of the reel as you're lifting, because as you know, the fish is going away from you. You can lift to a point where you're just lifting and reeling, and all you're doing is pulling line off, reeling it on, pulling it off, reeling it on.
Jeff Malone: So I try to explain to them to allow the fish to run. He's allowed to run. I mean, we have buoys on our anchor systems. He's not going to take all your line. I've got plenty of horsepower that says there's no way he's going to take it all. We'll chase him down with the boat if that's necessary. I think sometimes people are under this misconception that they're going to be able to just reel them in. Well, first of all, we've got to get him tired before he ever allows that to happen. So with the proper drag setting, which is part of my job, we make sure the drag is set in a manner that he's going to stop and get tired of pulling against that tension. It just takes a minute. You don't just reel them in. You don't reel a twenty-five pound jack in on ten or fifteen pound line in five minutes. You have to fight the fish.
Jeff Malone: I think some people just aren't familiar with fighting fish or fighting fish techniques because they were brought up in a pond where you reel in a bream. You don't fight them. You don't let them pull drag. You don't wear them out. You flip them up on the shore, and that's the end of it. So I try to explain how the drag works and how we can adjust the tension with the drag knob on top of the reel so that we can loosen it or tighten it.
Jeff Malone: Personally, I like to set it to a certain setting. Then if I want to add additional pressure, what I'd refer to as palming the spool, I put my hand on it to give a little bit of extra pressure, whereby trying to tighten the knob, you can't let go fast enough. You can't react to the knob fast enough. So I like to set it somewhere where there's ample tension on the fish, and if I want to add extra, I'll palm it with the palm of my hand. With some of my more experienced anglers and customers, I've taught them those techniques, because they need to know how to apply a little more pressure to close the deal quicker.
Jeff Malone: But I think it's important for people to not be reeling against the drag, most importantly, because it's not helping their cause or their case in fighting the fish at all. Let the rod do all of its job. The reel essentially is just simply a line retriever. That's its job, to retrieve the line. Now, it also puts pressure with the drag, but at the end of the day, I think too often it gets used as a winch. I've had reel handles literally broken off where people are torquing and straining on the reel handle so hard they literally break the handle off the rod. I don't even know how you put that much torque and tension on a spinning reel.
Jeff Malone: But I try to teach that you use the rod for lifting, and if you need to use both hands to lift, use both hands, because you're never going to be reeling and lifting at the same time. You're either lifting or reeling, but you're not lifting and reeling. I try to explain that so people start to understand, oh, that makes sense. And I say lift slow, reel fast, because again, if you lift too quickly, you're just pulling line off the reel that you then have to reel back on. So a lot of times, in the case of fighting some of these larger fish, it may be a stalemate, and you might be losing line for periods of time.
Jeff Malone: As long as the line stays taut and you keep the line tight, in theory it should stay on there until you catch them. But I too often see folks try to reel quick to catch them, or reeling against the drag while the fish is running away, and you're just wearing yourself out and stressing out the line. I think it's really important to understand that it's just time and pressure. Put the heat on them with what I have set for you, and if it's not enough, I'll tighten it a little bit if that's necessary, or we'll chase after them with the boat.
Jeff Malone: Reeling against the drag is a challenge, and the one time I give customers credit is when there's an issue with the drag clicker gone out, and they don't know they're reeling against the drag because they can't hear it. Drag clickers are important because then you know the line's going out. But naturally, those of us who do it a lot can just look down and simply see the spool spinning and know not to reel against it. For an inexperienced angler, look at the reel when you're fighting them and see what's happening there. Learn about what's going on so that you can better fight the fish. It's going to be a more enjoyable experience for you and allow you to catch more fish, because the equipment isn't compromised.
Tom Rowland: For sure. Seems like you've gone over that speech a lot of times. That is kind of the thing, though, when you get somebody who has never caught a fish that fights the way an average fish fights in the Florida Keys, not even a giant. Just take a three pound jack crevalle. A three pound jack crevalle is going to pull some drag, and if you don't know how to do it, you don't know how to do it. But back when we were fishing with mono only, before braid even existed, when you reeled against the drag, you would really spin up the line. The line would spin up, and then you'd have this problem where if they dropped the rod too fast and created slack, that slack would spin up around the tip, and then the fish would pull and it would snap the fish off. I saw that happen a lot of times. So then you're really super careful about not reeling against the drag because you don't want to spin that line up, and after that the line's really hard to fish with. Right?
Jeff Malone: That's true, that's true, that's true. And I think, to be honest with you, just because of the stretch of the monofilament, it's going to do it anyway.
Jeff Malone: That's why I didn't necessarily mention reeling against the drag specifically. When I catch these great big tarpon, I use mono. I like to stretch the mono personally. And even with my most seasoned anglers, after fighting a big tarpon for whatever it is, thirty, forty-five minutes, that line is twisted as heck, and not from reeling against the drag, just from the pure stretch of pulling on that thing. That stretches it enough that it twists real bad, and you can get a tip wrap, which is what you're referring to, and break them off. It's something I am always watching for.
Jeff Malone: When I get a fish near the boat, I'm always watching that rod tip, because it's so easy. A simple example would be shark fishing. We've got him up next to the boat. What do I do? Put the rod in the rod holder, number one. That way you don't lose the rod during the whole landing procedure, because naturally he's going to take off more than likely. If that rod's on the deck, the rod's gone. So, sticking the rod in the holder first. The next thing I do as I'm grabbing the leader is look at the rod tip, because if it's twisted and he takes off, game over, and now he swims away with a big rig in his face and the fish is gone.
Jeff Malone: So that's something I do with almost every fish we get boat-side: put the rod in the rod holder, which is where the rod belongs, not on the deck. Second pet peeve of mine. And then I look at the rod tip and make sure we're not tip-wrapped with monofilament. Then I can go proceed with taking a picture or letting the customer touch a shark, or whatever the case is. But that's important, watching that rod tip and making sure it's not tip wrapped.
Tom Rowland: Love it. Alright, that's how to do it from Captain Jeff Malone at Hawks Cay. If you want to go fishing with Jeff Malone, how do you do it? Tarpontime.com. Tarpontime.com, that's how you do it. He's got two boats ready to go all year round. Call him up, he's awesome. Alright, Jeff, thanks so much, we'll talk to you later.
Jeff Malone: Thanks, Tom. Take it easy.
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