The rod wasn't the hard part, CM, it was the reel.

It was painfully obvious when I hooked that fish with the Mickey Rod. It's very easy to feel the "bite" on that rod.

From there, I used a combination of reeling, swearing, reeling, screaming for the net, more reeling, high sticking, Ooooing and Ahhhing, reeling, and running up and down and back and foward on the bank to land the fish.

Easy as pie.