YOU LIFT THE ROD. The guide screams. You know you’ve done a Very Bad Thing.
“Not the trout set! For #@&*! sake, you never trout set!”
I would rather live that classic old nightmare—standing in front of my high school homeroom class buck naked—than hear those words and feel the guide’s glare burn through the back of my neck gaiter. I have blown a thousand shots at fish, but nothing comes close to the debilitating humiliation of the trout set on a tarpon strike.
The first three times this happened all came within the span of a single half hour.