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Rants And Raves


alantani

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3/22/09 - Questions about general reel maintenance are the most common questions I get. After all, you’ve just spent $50 to $500 on a brand new reel and you’d like to keep it looking like new. You’d also like to keep it WORKING like new. Think of the dozens of reels in your lifetime that have died and gone to reel heaven. Now you’re buying a new reel to replace an old one and you want THIS one to be different. That’s the way it works, isn’t it.

Maintaining the outside is a simple matter. Try not to drag it around on the deck, rinse it with fresh water at the end of the day, dry it with a towel, and maybe even wipe it down with a little bit of light oil. The problem is the inside. Do you use a lot of water or just a little? What about Salt Away? Should you back of the star or leave it buttoned down? Should you leave the lever in the strike position or free? How do I keep this reel from seizing up like the last one did?

Personally, I only use star drag reels for local fishing. Northern California saltwater fishing is pretty light duty most of the time. After a long day on the water we’ll get home, I’ll hand off the rods and reels to the kids and turn them loose with a water hose. If I’m lucky, they might even get around to actually drying everything. Just as often as not, the rods and reels are stowed in the garage, dripping wet, with some of the drags buttoned down and others loose. The next week, we’ll load everything up on the boat, go fish and usually not have a single problem with our tackle. Most guys will run into problems with a lax maintenance schedule like this. We will do fine because the reels had been serviced when they were brand new.

The most important thing you can do to maintain your reel is to service it when it is brand new. The mantra is greased carbon fiber drag washers, spool bearings that are open and lightly lubed, level wind assemblies that are lightly lubed, non-spool bearings that are packed with grease, grease on all the screws and a light coat of grease on all the non-exposed surfaces. Do a thorough job the first time and your reel should last for years. Done properly, the only things in your reel that should remain at risk are the spool bearings. If you pack the spool bearings with grease, they will never rust, but you won’t be able to cast either. If you lube them and leave them, they will eventually rust. The best maintenance schedule, then, is to thoroughly service your reel first. After every fishing trip, rinse your reel with fresh water and dry it with a towel or compressed air. Finally, lube the bearings and the level wind assembly with a light oil. Stick with this schedule and your reel should last for years.

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Thanks Alan,

Can I ask a spin reel question please...

Spin reels don't rely on bearings turning a spool when casting so in theory, protection can become the main focus. When spinning, particularly with ultra light outfits though, constant casting and retrieving means that free running side and main shaft bearings make fishing much less tiring.

I play the trade off... with bigger reels that I'm not using for lure fishing, I pack the bearings with grease. For lure fishing though, I'll use a lighter grease (Shimano Permalube) or light grease in the side bearings and oil in the shaft bearing... and for my small reels (2000 size Diawas for example) mainly I just use oil. The trade off being that I have to be much more vigilant with maintenance.

Got my fingers crossed for my delivery of CorrosionX this week which will give me increased confidence in the protection side of things :biggrin2:

What are your thoughts?

Cheers, Slinky

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Thanks Alan,

Can I ask a spin reel question please...

you've no doubt noticed that i have a heavy bias against spinners. still, they offer a number of significant advantages. nothing personal, it's just that there are too many of them and they change models every few years. cynic that i am, i've come to believe that the manufacturers want you to BUY a new one every few years as well. here in the US, the market has been flooded with cheap spinning reels. yes, pack the bearing with grease and replace the felt drag washers with grease carbon fiber and you will have a reel that may outlast you!

KNOW YOUR DRAG SETTINGS

3/23/09 - In medicine, one of the first things a student is taught is the difference between the subjective and the objective. Subjectives are things that a patient will complain of, like "Hey, doc, i ache all over, my back hurts and i'm hearing voices." Objectives are things that can be assigned hard numbers, like a heart rate, a blood pressure, a respiratory rate and a temperature. Back pain can be subject to interpretation, but the number of pills taken in the previous week to treat that back pain is an objective hard number. In deciding how best to help a patient, appreciating these differences can be very helpful.

So it is also in fishing. Subjectively, someone can say that a reel easy to crank, the drags are smooth and the spool spins like crazy. Objectively, a reel will have physical dimension, line capacity, a retrieve ratio, a maximum drag setting, and a freespool time. The battle I constantly fight is trying to get guys to actually measure and properly set their drags. What could be more simple? You spool up your reel with 300 yards of 30 pound monofilament, tie the line off to a spring scale and rear back on the rod like you're fighting a fish. A typical drag setting would be 25 to 33% of your line weight. That means you adjust the drag setting for your 30 pound reel until the scale reads 7.5 to 10 pounds.

Now imagine getting stuck at your wife’s office party. Just to tick her off, you’ve worn that fish tie that the kids got you for Christmas. Bored to death and two drinks into the evening, some total stranger comes up to you and starts to talk fishing. He’s big, tall, a little overweight, and he’s got arms like your thighs. In a loud gruff voice, he tells you about the time he was “spooled in seconds” by a giant yellowfin tuna on a San Diego 5 day trip. You have the presence of mind not to roll your eyes. Just trying to hold up your end of the conversation, you ask what kind of reel he was using and what the drag setting was. You’ve heard this answer before. “I don’t need a scale! I can set the drags by hand.”

OK, settle down. You’ve only had two drinks and you’re going to find out later that this bozo is your wife’s boss. He could be right. He could also be a total idiot. Either way, it is not worth arguing because you have no objective measures. More importantly, your glass is empty and there’s no one at the bar. Just tell him that you need to find your wife and avoid him for the rest of the evening. Know your drag settings, guys. It really is just that simple.

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Define Smooth!

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3/25/09 - The short answer is 1 foot every 5 seconds. This is the objective standard that I use to define a smooth drag system for a reel. Let’s say that I have star drag reel loaded with straight 20 pound mono and I want to set the drag to 25% or 5 pounds. What I’ll do is put the reel on the rod, run the line through the guides, tie the line off to a 5 pound downrigger weight and then button down the star. Then I will reel the rod tip down to the weight and lift until I have a 45 degree angle on the butt and a nice gentleman’s bend in the rest of the rod. Ideally, the rod should be loaded up so that the rod tip is midway between the bottom of the butt and the top of the arc. This should distribute the load evenly over all the guides. Now back off the star until the weight drops 1 foot every 5 seconds. You now have a dynamic drag setting of 5 pounds THROUGH the guides. Lower the rod and you decrease the drag. Point the rod straight down and you eliminate the rod’s contribution to the total drag pressure. Good quality guides will contribute no more than 10% to the total drag setting.

This is a little more difficult to do with a lever drag reel. Pulling back on a scale will give you a close enough approximation. If your drag system is not smooth, you will know as soon as you hook on a fish that’s big enough to peel some line off the spool. We’ve all seen a rod tip bounce when the drag is sticky. Check your own reels to see how smooth your drags are. If your reels have a greased carbon fiber drag system, you should easily be able to reach this level of performance. If they are sticky, consider an upgrade. Smooth is always better. Having a sticky drag system is a quick way to break off a fish.

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Check Your Rods as Well.

3/26/09 - A school of 50 to 80 pound Guadalupe yellow fin tuna were working the chum line off the stern of the “Spirit.” Several of us were already hooked up. Then it was Wesley’s turn. A yellow fin picked up his bait and line started peeling off his reel. After an agonizingly long three count, he threw the reel into gear. His rod loaded up in an instant. Then came that sickening sound from his reel, “zzztttttttt, zzztttttttt, zzzzzzztttttttttttt, powwwwwwwwww!!!!!!!!!!!!” Tail between his legs, he walked back to his tackle box, tied on another hook, pinned on another bait and flipped it out into the chum line from an empty corner on the stern. His bait was inhaled as soon as it hit the water. Three more seconds and threw is reel into gear. I heard the same “zzztttttttt, zzztttttttt, zzzzzzztttttttttttt, powwwwwwwwww." He was so angry that he almost chucked that rod and reel into the water. By the time he picked another rig, the bite had died.

I had serviced his reel before the trip and had no idea what was going on. During a lull in the bite, I tore his reel down and found no problems at all. I spooled it back up and grabbed a scale. I hooked the line up to the scale, pulled back on the rod like I was fighting a fish and set the drag to 15 pounds. Then, just out of curiosity, I pulled back in a straight line and got 10 pounds. I was shocked!!!! The rod was adding 50% to the drag setting. A quick check revealed a ceramic insert in the rod tip that was grooved. I pulled off the ceramic tip, glued on a roller tip, and we were back in business. Now, through the guides, I had a 15 pound drag setting rearing back on the rod. On a straight pull, with no load on the guides, I had 13 pounds. As far as Wesley was concerned, that rod had bad Juju, but at least I knew what the problem was.

For local fishing in Northern California, my rods all have guides with ceramic inserts. My long range rods are a little different. Mind you, these are not hard and fast rules. For drag settings of 10 pounds and less, I use rods that have guides all the up. For drag settings of 11 to 15 pounds, I add a roller tip. It probably does decrease my casting distance a little, but I am so lousy at casting that I think it does not make a different. For 16 to 20 pound drag settings, I added a roller tip and roller stripper. For drag settings in excess of 20 pounds, my rods have rollers all the way up. To get the smoothest performance from your gear, both the rod and the reel need to work.

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3/27/09 - There are several different drag systems that are commonly used in reels today. Their smoothness, this lack of “start up,” can sometimes be the difference between landing a fish or not. I service an average of about a thousand reels a year and I think I’ve pretty much seen every drag material that’s ever been used. Remember, I would define a “smooth drag” as having less than 10% “start up.” If you have a weight that is equivalent to your drag setting and hang that weight on the reel, a smooth drag would allow that weight to drop 1 foot every 5 seconds. A “reliable drag” would then be a smooth drag that would never become sticky as the reel ages. Simple enough, so let’s see what’s out there.

Leather was used as a drag material in the early Mitchells from France, the early Ocean City’s, the early Penn’s and many others. It did not perform well. Over the years, many different materials were developed, including felt, particle board, hard carbon and some unique composites. They all became sticky over time. Coarse woven carbon fiber, their famous HT-100, eventually became the drag material of choice for Penn, but this material would stick if it became wet, corroded or oily. Shimano took it one step further by adding pure teflon grease and found that their greased carbon fiber drag system never failed. Yes, that is never, as in not ever, not once, zero. This wet drag system has now found its way into the flagship two speed lever drag reels of many manufacturers, including Penn, Daiwa and Okuma. The engineers at Accurate used dry carbon fiber in 1996 with their first reels, then added Cal’s Drag Grease in 2007. They also now enjoy a zero failure rate with their drag systems.

Greased carbon fiber is only now starting to show up in star drag reels. Pro Gear used these drag washers in the final runs of their Albacore Special and Classic Series reels, but the company is now gone. Daiwa is using greased carbon is their new Saltist 20 and 30. Okuma has a Carbonite drag washer, which is also greased carbon fiber. This is admittedly a short list, but I believe that it will be getting longer in the near future. If your reel has a dry carbon fiber drag system and has become sticky, the simple addition of a pure teflon grease is an option. If your reel has a different type of drag material, your local tackle shop may be able to install carbon fiber. Upgrades such as this usually involve adapting a Penn HT-100 or an aftermarket Carbontex drag washer. The addition of a Cal’s Drag Grease will then give your star drag reel the same smoothness and reliability enjoyed by the most expensive two speed lever drag reels.

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  • 3 years later...

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