Though his competitive-casting days are behind him, Ron Arra stays active teaching casting lessons and working with manufacturers to develop fishing products.

In his prime, Cape Cod surf fisherman Ron Arra would uncork mighty casts that seemed bound for the moon. A former professional athlete, he won five national championships for distance casting between 1983 and 1988.

He tossed a 5¼-ounce lead weight on 12-pound monofilament a Paul Bunyan-esque 758 feet, 4 inches (more than 250 yards) in 1987 in Falmouth, Massachusetts. In 1989, he became the first person to heave a tear-drop sinker across Cape Cod Canal at Pole 100. That monster cast traveled 786 feet. He would repeat the feat three more times that week. Unofficially, he’s tossed a casting weight 850 feet, nearly three football fields.

We stand beside the canal before 6 a.m. on a muggy summer morning as Arra steadily casts large surface plugs that disappear into the fog hanging over the swift, cool waters. Forty years after his first title, the power and signature fluidity that made Arra a champion caster are still evident. “It’s timing, all timing,” says Arra, who is 78 and lives in East Sandwich, Massachusetts, just 10 minutes from the 17-mile canal, which can turn into a veritable fish factory anytime squid, mackerel, bunker and other bait are packed in.

“Smooth,” I observe.

“You have to be. That’s how you get your distance,” says Arra, who fishes several days a week. “Nice and easy, that’s all you need.” Arra is wearing his summer outfit: a Penn cap and shirt, AFTCO pants and work boots with hex-head screws driven through the soles for traction. Sometimes he fishes in shorts.

Thirty years after he appeared on the front page of Cape Week, you can still find Ron Arra fishing the Cape Cod Canal for his beloved striped bass. 

His casts seem effortless, but the precision and distance speak to hundreds of hours of practice, as well as Arra’s hand-eye coordination and muscle memory. He estimates that his typical casts in the canal travel between 300 and 475 feet, landing roughly midstream, where he says the largest stripers are found.

Striper fishing had been good up until a day or two before photographer Michael Cevoli and I were set to meet Arra. Then, as if on cue, the bait and the bite made quick exits from the man-made waterway that connects Buzzards Bay and Massachusetts Bay. That’s fishing.

The previous week, Arra caught and released stripers weighing 28, 30 and 35 pounds, all taken on surface plugs. “I like taking them on top,” says the longtime surfcaster, who has caught his share of 50-pounders from the canal, a gold standard for large stripers. “Seeing them crash the surface, that’s the rush for me. Makes me feel like I’m 30 years younger.”

Arra’s long casts can put him on fish in zones that hold larger fish — area’s that most anglers can’t reach.

A skilled woodworker, Arra grew up in Needham, Massachusetts, where he excelled as a high school athlete, a four- letter jock who played baseball, football, and indoor and outdoor track. Arra stood 6 feet, 1 inch, and weighed 210 pounds. And he was strong. “My whole life was sports,” Arra recalls.

He was chosen in high school to play in a William Randolph Hearst Sandlot Classic game at Fenway Park, where he hit a long drive that was caught against the wall in left center field. The Fenway experience remains alive in the memory of the man who as an adolescent dreamed of being a big-leaguer.

Arra played football at the University of Wisconsin – La Crosse for one season, leaving to sign a minor league baseball contract in 1966 with the Pittsburgh Pirates. Arra hoped to play outfield and highlight his hitting skills. The Pirates had other plans. The club attempted to turn him into a pitcher, a move that ended his baseball dreams after one year. A strong high school punter, Arra also tried out for the Boston Patriots of the American Football League (forerunner to the New England NFL team).

Arra keeps himself in shape today with daily walks or bike rides. On our visit, he climbed the steep bank along the canal using a spinning and conventional rod as hiking poles. “I feel good today,” he says. “You get to my age, and some days you feel good. Somedays you don’t. Every day I do something to keep in shape. At my age, you lose it quickly.”

Over the course of 90 minutes, he changes plugs several times. “Watch this one go,” Arra says as he prepares to cast a yellow 4-ounce Cow Hunter surface lure, one of the Ron Arra Signature Series wooden plugs made by Strike Pro. “Come on,” he urges as he begins to “slide” the lure across the surface. “Hit it!”

Strike Pro offers a Ron Arra signature line of plugs. 

But the fish gods aren’t interested in intervening today. We listen to the fog-muffled sounds of outboards and diesels, and watch as the vessels they’re pushing emerge from the soup, pass by and quickly disappear. To the east, a great blue heron perches motionless on a rock as if plucked from a Japanese ink-wash painting. Several osprey fly just above the layer of fog. One successful fish hawk labors overhead, ferrying a bunker toward the trees.

The morning’s outcome was not unexpected given the lack of forage. “Once the bait leaves,” Arra says, “the fish leave.”

Known for his long casts with a surf rod, Arra is also an expert fly-fisherman.

Ron Arra grew up fishing and hunting with his father, who worked as a firefighter in Needham. “My dad was a natural athlete and a heck of fly caster,” Arra recalls. “I took after my dad in just about everything. What an outdoorsman.”

Arra began fishing the canal as a boy under the tutelage of his father, who taught him how to cast a conventional surf outfit. “When I started fishing the canal, it was all conventional,” Arra says. Now he estimates that less than 1 percent of those who fish the popular waterway use a revolving spool reel. The reasons are simple: Spinning tackle is far easier to cast and has improved dramatically since the 1960s. Arra is old school and keeps a foot in both camps. He brings both a spinning and conventional outfit, both 11½ feet long.

When tossing plugs less than 3 ounces, he picks up his spinning rod. For casting heavier plugs and when large bass are in residence, he prefers to fish his conventional outfit. “There’s nothing like casting with a conventional,” he says. When he was competing, he also was extremely accurate with that setup. “At 700 feet,” he says, “I used to hit a 10-foot circle.”

Arra can do things with a conventional surf rig that is beyond the ken of most of us. “I have a gift — I hate to sound like I’m bragging, but I’m one of the best fishermen at controlling a conventional in fishing situations,” he says. “In the dark, fishing the canal, casting off a beach. It’s a feel. It’s the sound of the reel and the feel of the spool.” He has what used to be called an “educated thumb,” which he applies to control the speed of the spool.

Arra spent more than two decades teaching woodworking and enjoys carving fish in wood.

Longtime friend Mike Laptew recalls filming Arra years ago on a Rhode Island turf field as he prepared for a tournament. Arra was using a 13-foot tournament rod and an Abu Garcia 6500 reel loaded with 12-pound test DuPont Stren mono (now a Pure Fishing product). Laptew had his camera focused on the reel. What happened next still amazes him. “He dumped the spool,” exclaims Laptew, a videographer, photographer and free diver from Middletown, Rhode Island. “It was down to six wraps left on the spool.”

Laptew says he has watched his friend cast a plug 400 to 500 feet, landing within 5 feet of breaking fish. “He’s not one for exaggerations,” he says. “He is a man of his word.”

Arra is an all-around waterman. He ties flies in winter and ice-fishes when the ponds freeze; he enjoys chasing trout, largemouth and smallies on the fly; he digs steamers, quahogs and gathers oysters; he makes lovely fish carvings; and he fishes the Cape beaches for stripers after dark with a fly rod.

He is a natural teacher and a master carpenter. He spent 22 years teaching woodworking skills to special-needs kids, 18 of those years in a program called The Home for Little Wanderers in Plymouth, Massachusetts. “A lot of miracles happened there,” says Arra, a man of deep faith who is married and has two grown children. “These kids have abilities you wouldn’t believe.”

Every Friday, he would take his young charges fishing in a pond behind the shop, which was full of largemouth and smallmouth bass. The fishing was good — it was part of the curriculum — and both the teacher and his students enjoyed the change of pace. “You have to have a heart to be a teacher, ” Arra says.

“He is a good soul,” says Laptew, who produced a how-to video with Arra’s casting. “He has the virtues of an angel.”

If there is an opportunity to fish, Ron Arra will make the most of it. 

Arra fills his days fishing, exercising and giving casting lessons for fly, spin and conventional tackle. “One of the things I’m most proud of is all the lessons I’ve given, at all levels,” says Arra, who has taught hundreds of people how to improve their cast and find more distance.

He has also published two casting books, co-written with Curt Garfield, a former SaltWater Sportsman editor. The Ultimate Guide to Surfcasting (Lyons Press) includes a forward by the late New York Times outdoor columnist Nelson Bryant, an excellent writer who
approached subjects with a no-nonsense, Yankee appraisal, as befitted a World War II combat veteran.

“When I first watched Arra cast — throwing about 700 feet across a Martha’s Vineyard meadow back in the late 1980s — I witnessed an exciting blend of power and grace, and knew that I had neither the dedication nor, probably, the coordination to achieve such mastery,” Bryant wrote. “I did, however, use some of his techniques to increase my average toss with a surf rod by a hundred feet or more, no stunning achievement but just about what I wanted.”

How Arra learned the so-called pendulum method of casting speaks to his natural coordination and agility. He remembers reading a how-to story in SaltWater Sportsman about British casting champion John Holden and his technique. Arra says he propped the magazine open on a chair outdoors and, following the steps, eventually developed a modified pendulum cast, which is more suited to everyday surf anglers looking for a little more distance.

One thing that Arra, Bryant and I agree on is that distance is often not the most important ingredient of success for those who fish from the beach or rocks. Good surf anglers learn that catching hinges on reading the water and understanding the effects of wind, weather, tide, time of day, lure selection, various retrieves and a dozen other factors. There are times when another 30 yards will make the difference between catching fish and not, but it’s just one piece of an ever-changing puzzle. Still, it’s nice to have the ability to really let one fly when fish are going bonkers at the edge of your range. Arra can catch fish in the canal when they’re too far for others to reach.

Arra’s enthusiasm for life and fishing sets him apart from others his age, according to his friends. “He is like a kid in a candy store when he’s fishing,” says Stephen Desisto, a close friend and retired journeyman glazer. “His enthusiasm at his age is unbelievable. He’s the real deal.”

Arra insisted we meet at 4 a.m., in part because he was worried someone might be in his spot ahead of him. We compromised at 4:30, and he still had the place to himself. But that’s how passionate anglers are wired.

An aside: I knew an avid surf jockey who was hospitalized with a heart attack. When his friends visited him, his first question was: “Is there anybody fishing my rock?” You can’t make it up.

Desisto refers to Arra as the Bobby Orr of surf fishing, after the Boston Bruins hockey great. “He’s been a very good friend to me,” Desisto says. “I just enjoy being around him and sharing more time, more water and more stories with him.”

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Desisto met Arra many years ago at a sportsman show in Plymouth. Arra was there representing Lamiglas, which built a series of Ron Arra surf rods, including one model that was judged best in show at a national fishing trade show years ago. The relationship between Arra and Lamiglas lasted 25 years, until the company owner died. “You know, a lot of his friends have passed away, and some just aren’t fishing as much anymore,” Desisto says. But Arra is reluctant to slow down. “He has to get out there. It’s just in his blood. He’s very driven.”

Having once knocked on the door of the big leagues, Arra knows the fleeting nature of fame. He is not the household name he once was among the surf set back when he appeared in numerous magazine stories and ads, and was winning trophies and cash prizes in the DuPont-sponsored casting contests. He was written up extensively for his long-distance prowess in newspapers and magazines, from The New York Times to Sports Illustrated.

“That doesn’t bother me at all,” says Arra of his now-lower profile. “My lures keep my name out there.” His photo graces Strike Pro lure boxes, and his name is printed on the plugs. His celebrity continues to attract clients for casting lessons, as well.

Arra has been a design consultant and an ambassador for a host of companies, including Penn Reels, Berkley, Lamiglas, Strike Pro, Spider Wire, AFTCO, Red Top Sporting Goods, Fuji guides, Sampo Tackle and Maui Jim sunglasses. Not too shabby for a carpenter and outdoorsman who was lured away from a good job with an architectural woodworking firm in Boston in 1977 for a life on Cape Cod. He’d purchased a lot in 1968 near Sandy Neck Beach, where he’d caught one of his first stripers as a kid. He always knew he’d live there one day.

Arra is rightfully proud of the recognition he has garnered through his casting, endorsements and lessons. He’s sublimely happy riding his canal bike, with its five rod holders, along the bike path and wrestling big bass in the currents on conventional gear. He loves his corner of the Cape. “It’s a beautiful place, isn’t it?” he says.

We spend a full day trailing after Arra, moving from the Canal to Long Pasture Wildlife Sanctuary on Barnstable Harbor, a pretty stretch of marsh and sheltered waters where Arra often casts for schoolies and digs steamers. He has two freshwater ponds within 10 minutes of his home that hold trout and bass.

The fall run is approaching, and Arra is fired up for those days when you can catch fish throughout the day. “I love the salt,” Arra says. “Just the smell of it. I have to see the water every day, whether I’m walking or fishing. I’ve got salt in my blood.”

For more information about casting lessons, contact Arra at rafishing @comcast.net.