Reel Repair by Alan Tani

Quote from: Porthos on September 05, 2023, 02:20:00 PM

Quote from: JasonGotaProblem on September 04, 2023, 11:24:51 PMDevil's advocate: if you only fish a reel within its design parameters you're just lugging around excessively heavy hardware to do a job that could be accomplished by abusing something lighter.

And if it's a quality reel, it'll take that abuse just fine.

By the above logic, a Daiwa SALTIGAG8000H (23.1 oz), with its 55 lb max drag rating, can be a 100lb reel, which you can then do night drop fishing with for SoCal BFT...hmm. Be more than happy to be fishing next to you, but I'll be fishing a Okuma Makaira MK-30000LS (39 oz) using just 30lbs of its factory-rated 66lbs max.

Is that model of saltist a quality reel? If so I'm sure it would do just fine if it has the line capacity, and i believe it does. If memory serves those have brass gears, a backup AR, and decent drag heat dissipation. A definite upgrade over a BG whose main shaft bends if you look at it wrong. I find I'm moving away from spinners for all but the lightest uses. But if I hurt my right hand or something and couldn't crank a conventional, that would probably be fairly reasonable.

There's reels that make the drag to fish 100# line for a GT or jigging Tuna where you need to put the wood to 'em to stop them short and avoid structure. Short fights, over quick.

And then there are legit 100# class reels that you can fish with a legit 25# of drag harnessed up for Cow Tuna and have a real death match for the next 4 hours...

The two are not the same and a Saltist or even BG may do one for a little while, but not the other no matter how much drag it puts out by the numbers. They over build a VISX 30 for a reason.

Quote from: JasonGotaProblem on September 04, 2023, 11:24:51 PMDevil's advocate: if you only fish a reel within its design parameters you're just lugging around excessively heavy hardware to do a job that could be accomplished by abusing something lighter.

And if it's a quality reel, it'll take that abuse just fine.

I... think I understand what you're saying here, but I'm not sure I completely follow. Can you give examples?

If it's a quality reel it will (probably?) have higher design parameters. If you go beyond those you're just abusing an expensive reel? For example a Stella 5000 SWC is, according to the spec, good for 28lb of drag, which makes it an 80lb reel by the oldschool 1/3rd method and a 60lb reel if you go by a more modern 50%. If you fish a Stella 5000 as an 80lb class reel you're... ambitious, and that's using a very kind word.

Those parameters exist for a reason, and a fairly good amount of the time the drag numbers in particular are complete fantasy and the reel is at its absolute limits to achieve them.

There is so much more that goes into whether a reel is suitable for a certain kind of fishing than a handful of numbers. The fundamental reality is that probably 99.9% of fish are caught in a manner that never really tests the gear involved anyway.

Quote from: JasonGotaProblem on September 05, 2023, 02:45:24 PMIs that model of saltist a quality reel? If so I'm sure it would do just fine if it has the line capacity, and i believe it does. If memory serves those have brass gears, a backup AR, and decent drag heat dissipation.

Saltiga* and it's an extremely high quality reel ($1000 or so), but it holds about 130m of PE8, and would probably get spooled on the first run of a good fish.