Duce rods

[jchief]

1. High-Sticking
The most common error is high-sticking—holding the rod at, or close to, vertical while fighting or landing a fish—which bends the rod in a candy-cane shape, causing the most fragile part of the rod, the tip, to bear the brunt of the stress. Anglers in boats make this mistake most often because a fish can swim quite literally right under the angler’s feet, or even under the boat. When a graphite fly rod is bent, the fibers on the top of the bend are stretched, while those on the inside of the bend are compressed. Since the tensile strength (stretch) of carbon fiber is higher than the compression strength, a fly rod almost always fails on the compression side.


High-sticking causes the tip of the rod—it's weakest part—to bear most of the pressure. As the tip bends more and more (left), the graphite on the inside of the curve compresses until it snaps (center). Then you're left with less than a whole rod (right), which may land the fish, but won't cast anymore. (photo: Philip Monahan)
When you’re landing large or heavy fish, it’s critical that you take care to note the stress you’re putting on the rod. The closer the rod gets to vertical, the closer it is to failing. A net is invaluable. They don’t just land fish, but they save rods, too. Aside from shortening the time the rod is stressed, a net increases your reach, thus decreasing the stress on the rod simply because the rod is not so close to vertical.
It’s also possible to high-stick the rod when you’re not fighting fish. Countless rod tips are popped by anglers who rig their rods by threading the fly line through the bottom guides and then bend the rod to thread the line through those final guides at the top. Thousands of expensive graphite sticks meet their premature and tragic demise this way—snapped in the parking lot or at the boat ramp moments before the day’s fishing is about to commence.

Good article on how not to break a rod.
http://www.americanangler.com/technique/busted