Change from left hand to right hand
Printed From: The Fishing Website
Category: Saltwater Fishing
Forum Name: The Briny Bar
Forum Description: The place for general chat on saltwater fishing!
URL: https://www.fishing.net.nz/forum/forum_posts.asp?TID=138593
Printed Date: 26 Jun 2026 at 4:57am
Topic: Change from left hand to right hand
Posted By: Kandrew
Subject: Change from left hand to right hand
Date Posted: 22 May 2024 at 6:08pm
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Hi guys I’ve ended up with a problem in my left elbow which gives me a bit of pain when I go fishing, basically it’s tennis elbow and it’s because I hold my fishing rod in my left hand and wind with my right hand. Doctor thinks it will take about 6 months to come right so it’s time to swap to holding the fishing rod in the right and winding with the left. I’m lucky I really only use spinning reels so can swap the handle over. Has anyone here swapped over and did it take long until it started to feel normal. Cheers Kerry |
Replies:
Posted By: MB
Date Posted: 22 May 2024 at 6:31pm
| I'm right handed, hold the rod in my right and wind left handed. I could not imagine getting comfortable doing it the other way around. It just feels so wrong. That said, people learn to do all sorts of things after significant injuries, so I guess anything is possible! |
Posted By: Kandrew
Date Posted: 22 May 2024 at 6:39pm
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MB wrote:Posted By: Pcj
Date Posted: 22 May 2024 at 7:19pm
------------- "Times up" |
Posted By: smudge
Date Posted: 22 May 2024 at 11:02pm
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I'm left handed. I hold the rod with my left and wind with my right on both spin and overhead gear. That way I don't have to shuffle things around when casting, closing bail arms etc. My son Arron is right handed and he does the exact opposite for the same reasons. I've believed for many years that manufacturers got it wrong when they describe a reel as right handed. It will seem awkward at first but pretty soon I think it will become easier for you and once you have recovered you won't switch back. ------------- Best gurnard fisherman in my street |
Posted By: kimber7wsm
Date Posted: 23 May 2024 at 5:45am
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I'm right handed. I use my left were possible. I figure if I'm hanging on to a horse I might as well use my strong hand to do the lifting. Casting is much better with right hand. I see all these blokes swapping between hands to cast, wind and hanging on to big fish. Makes no sense to me. I buy as many reels as I can in left hand. But you can't buy a Tiagra in lefty. So I have to use my right for game fishing. I seem to be able to swap winding hands seamlessly, don't even really think about it. So I figure you'll be fine. Smudge is right about reel descriptions.
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Posted By: Kandrew
Date Posted: 23 May 2024 at 7:18am
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Thanks guys I watched a matt Watson video about hold rod in the right hand and winding with the left, he said it took him a couple of days to sort it and now only fishes that way Looks like I’m just gunna have to do more fishing to practice |
Posted By: The Tamure Kid
Date Posted: 23 May 2024 at 8:23am
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Hi Kerry, I'm obviously not a doctor, but I wonder if it's not the holding of the rod but the snapping action of the casting, that is the issue. So swapping rod hand may not solve the issue unless you change your casting action? I sometimes get a bit of that tennis elbow type pain at the end of a week of fishing, usually at the moment I really snap a softbait cast forward. I am right handed and have my left hand on the rod butt, and my right hand at the reel. I wind right handed because that's the way I learned (dropping bait on an egg beater). I've contributed to this type of debate before, my view being that I'm so much more co-ordinated with my right hand for subtle winding to tighten the line on the drop etc, and I'm not that weak with my left that I can't fight a big fish adequately on softbait gear. Might be different game fishing or jigging for kingies etc. Anyway, all the best. That type of niggle is miserable. I do typing/hand writing/mouse use for my job, and years ago had burning ligament/muscle thing in my right pen and 'mouse' arm. I could feel the muscle on top of my forearm twitch every time I moved my finger and hours of that a day caused the issue. My employer's response was to tell me to switch my mouse hand, rather than any physio etc. So I switched the mouse to my left hand, which felt unco as anything to start, but it soon got better. So I'm sure you'll be able to do the reel switch adequately in a short while and you'll be handling 18lbers on light string with no probs!
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Posted By: smudge
Date Posted: 23 May 2024 at 3:02pm
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You bring up a very good point TTK. Maybe if Kerry stopped showing off and caught smaller fish like the rest of he wouldn't have injured himself in the first place. Ohhh I'm starting to sound like the safety department at work. ------------- Best gurnard fisherman in my street |
Posted By: Kandrew
Date Posted: 23 May 2024 at 5:11pm
| Could be a bit of Karma do you reckon guys |
Posted By: Tonto2
Date Posted: 23 May 2024 at 7:35pm
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Just pondering. . ... if you get a sore arm playing tennis is it called fishing elbow? ------------- slowly going where everyone else has already been |
Posted By: Kandrew
Date Posted: 23 May 2024 at 7:41pm
| It’s actually golf elbow to many tantrums and club throwing |
Posted By: krow
Date Posted: 23 May 2024 at 8:34pm
I'm "normal"  and hold the rod with left hand and as a consequence my Left hand is stronger then my right on a grip test. Some would say that's from too much fishing but is there such a thing? No rude comments. |
Posted By: smudge
Date Posted: 24 May 2024 at 5:59am
That's pretty much asking us for rude comments  ------------- Best gurnard fisherman in my street |
Posted By: Kandrew
Date Posted: 24 May 2024 at 8:36am
| When I started this thread about which hand you hold your rod in, I thought just wait someone will take this into the toilet |
Posted By: Keith C
Date Posted: 24 May 2024 at 8:43am
And you took us there Kandrew. There was no mention of toilet humour until that post 
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Posted By: strx7
Date Posted: 24 May 2024 at 11:00am
| I had this same injury about 3 years ago, golfers elbow, caused by the amount of stray lining with an overhead I had done over a period of about 2 months. I had to wear a support on the forearm when fishing for the following few months and be cautious of how much of that style of fishing I did. It took a while but it did come right., at no stage did I consider changing hands.... |
Posted By: Kandrew
Date Posted: 24 May 2024 at 3:54pm
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Posted By: smudge
Date Posted: 24 May 2024 at 3:58pm
No I just carried it on. Some may say I have the mind of a 15 year old but that's not true. I'm not that mature. ------------- Best gurnard fisherman in my street |
Posted By: Crochet Cast
Date Posted: 27 May 2024 at 9:32pm
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I am right handed but reel with my left it’s natural to me now. I do have a suggestion? The reel handle will naturally rotate so try moving the rod up and down while holding the handle still. This definitely won’t help with your elbow but will help train your muscle memory in your left hand. Muscle memory is just repeating a movement over and over. The other thing to try is take the top section off one of your spinning setups and sit watching TV mindlessly just spun the reel. |
Posted By: MB
Date Posted: 27 May 2024 at 9:35pm
Correct, they should be described as "right hand wind". No ambiguity there!
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Posted By: Fish Addict
Date Posted: 27 May 2024 at 10:53pm
| I have several vintage handlines in my possession. I believe some are left-handed and others right-handed. Open to offers for the rarer LH models. |
Posted By: Kandrew
Date Posted: 28 May 2024 at 7:35am
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Posted By: Mc Tool
Date Posted: 28 May 2024 at 10:54am
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I think it depends on individual technique , how you were taught . I use a right hand wind overhead reel,mostly (always ) on a shorter stiff rod with 80lb braid. Winching up blue cod is hard work as they are so big and plentiful down here ( @#&*% jaffa's  ) .....or anything else that gets hauled up from under the boat doesnt require a lot of finesse , ergo the bull at a gate approach.Trout are a different story . I hold the rod in my right hand and wind with the left . The idea being that the control is provided by the dominant hand and the winching is done by the other . Lefties will probly do the opposite . To my way of thinkin winding an eggbeater with the right hand just means double handling the rod coz you gotta change hands all the time when casting and retrieving . Trout fishing I use my left index finger to push the line over to the right index finger so as to catch the line , then flick the bail over with left hand and cast . This way my right hand always holds the rod , no shuffling about whilst fingering the line or flicking the bail over , and when your doing hundreds of casts in a session this reduces fatigue . Only downside is that it took a bit of practice/patience to master . FWIW Im using an Abu Revo 2s , and wouldnt buy another ------------- I wish I was young again .... Id be heaps smarter than this time |
Posted By: Grunta
Date Posted: 28 May 2024 at 3:58pm
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I wind a spinning reel left handed as that's what we did as kids and it seems completely natural. I'm right handed so that's my stronger side I guess and that means casting softbaits and poppers is easy and I don't have to swap hands like you see many RH'ers do when casting or fighting a decent fish. The reel is for putting line back in a safe and sensible place as you wind it in, not for dragging the fish in - that's the rod's reason for being so it tracks that your stronger arm holds the rod and does the casting etc. That point has been pretty well covered in previous posts and they're bang on. Having said all of that, I'm comfortable using an overhead with RH wind as LH wind options are pretty rare - something I've just got used to as really no other practical option. Most of the softbaiters and topwater anglers I'd rate highly use left-hand wind for the same reasons Mc Tool and others have also highlighted. ------------- Online... |
Posted By: MB
Date Posted: 28 May 2024 at 4:45pm
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You can get left hand wind everything, but it can take some searching and possibly ordering from overseas, especially for big game reels. It doesn't take long to spot someone on YouTube/social media that is using a reel handle with the wrong hand for them. Rod is all over the place and there is no control. Some try to tuck the rod in to the opposite arm pit. What a cack-handed mess. |
Posted By: Kandrew
Date Posted: 28 May 2024 at 7:15pm
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Gunna give it a try this weekend, change the handle to the left hand side on all my reels before I go out and will just have to make it work. I have 3 baitcaster reels that I really don’t use much anymore, I have mainly changed over to spin reels as I prefer them for a lot of reasons. Better drags, less maintenance and you can pickup a pretty nice spin reel for under $300. The only baitcaster I use nowadays is on my slider setup, but I could easily go to a spin setup for this type of fishing as well. |
Posted By: The Tamure Kid
Date Posted: 29 May 2024 at 10:52pm
Given, according to the experts above, you've been using the 'wrong' hand to wind all these years - and you're a very capable lure fisho already - imagine how good you'll be when you've mastered using the 'right' (left) hand for winding, Kerry!!
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Posted By: Kandrew
Date Posted: 30 May 2024 at 11:08am
| More of an issue of having to, arm is pretty sore even holding a cell phone up to my ear is painful so there’s no way I could fish with my left hand. Doctor talking 3 to 6 months with plenty of rest for my elbow so I can’t wait that long. So this weekend I’m just gunna have to make it work. |
Posted By: smudge
Date Posted: 30 May 2024 at 4:08pm
My pick is you wont go back after a day or two of fishing ------------- Best gurnard fisherman in my street |
Posted By: brmbrm
Date Posted: 30 May 2024 at 7:38pm
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I am right handed. Spin reels have ALWAYS for me been wind the handle with the (stupid) left hand, manipulate the magic in the rod with the (clever and intuitive) right hand: twitch the lure/bait with the rod so need the right hand holding the rod. Manipulate the lure like you manipulate your dick (I mean when you have a piss rather than....:)) Overhead reels wind with the right hand since its basically a winch PS I got tennis elbow playing golf. I am basically really crap at golf. Also have arthritic thumb pain. Manage to struggle through for a fish though, but seems to flare up when her indoors wants me to do some gardening
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Posted By: Mc Tool
Date Posted: 30 May 2024 at 8:31pm
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Does anyone actually get tennis elbow from playing tennis , we got one who got it from his cell phone and one who says he got it playing golf ......but I dunno sounds like the golf ball wasnt the only thing getting a good whack . Just one more thing is this manipulation of your dick and the lure a simultaneous thing I mean there sure could be some confusion as to which hand best to wind with. ------------- I wish I was young again .... Id be heaps smarter than this time |
Posted By: Kandrew
Date Posted: 01 Jun 2024 at 11:16am
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Shot out this morning with the neighbor for a couple of hours, still some nice fish around came home with our limit. Fished left hand wind which wasn’t to bad, just was a bit unco-ordinated when I got a fish to the boat, but I was out there catching a feed. 
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Posted By: MB
Date Posted: 01 Jun 2024 at 1:46pm
| Well done, you made it work. Hopefully, it will get easier with practice. |
Posted By: Alan L
Date Posted: 01 Jun 2024 at 3:21pm
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Nice fat looking fish. Would have liked one or two like that. I got zero today - and I was using my proper hand. Maybe I should switch. Alan
------------- Legasea Legend member |