Drag

[mike1010]

My feet left the bottom and I started floating in the Dead Sea when I got chest deep. The water is buoyant and the air thick down there. Fortunately, the beer is cold at the worlds lowest bar!

World's lowest bar?  That's quite a claim.  I've been in some pretty raunchy places, and none on the Dead Sea.  (Sorry, I just had to.)

[cathauler65]

Not to disagree with anyone but a gallon of water is 8.34 lbs. That is the number we use for calculations at work. I am a licensed water treatment plant operator.

In the interest of specifics:

The weight will vary some with the temperature of the water.  To
begin, we know that by definitions,

  1 gallon = 231 in^3*(2.54 cm/in)^4/(1 cm^3/ml),
           = 3785.411784 ml,


exactly. Now it is just a matter of multiplying by the density d in
g/ml of water at the temperature you want, and then converting to
pounds by dividing by exactly 453.59237 g/lb. Thus the answer to 12
significant figures is

  1 gallon of water weighs 8.34540445202*d pounds.

Sorry guys, I was working on (bigger & better) Imperial Gallons (= 1.20095 US Gallons). Forgot you guys have your own system of measurement over there.

[Reel 224]

My way of measuring drag...Set the drag and pull on the line flexing the rod and adjust so it slips when it feels right. Always worked for me.

[fsrmn]

I also set the drag by feel. I find that I set the drag a bit tighter with the delrin in the stack due to the less friction on the start. I fish a looser drag than most because I like to extend the fight as long as possible. Only if it starts to spool me or heads for structure do I crank it down. After the fight it's all work till it hits the fork.

[Keta]

For lever drag reels a drag scale is important, especially when fishing on the high end of the drag scale.  Scales are cheep.

[Tightlines667]

For lever drag reels a drag scale is important, especially when fishing on the high end of the drag scale.  Scales are cheep.

I agree.  But I must admit, I need a scale that goes over 50lbs and a better method of testing the upper max drag limits on these larger class lever drag reels.  When finalizing the service/fine tuning spacing I typically am only able to measure the max effective drag (w/o mounting to a rod) at 'strike'.  I recently ran into a reel that performed flawlessly until it really heated up, and was worked at near full drag on a larger fish.  I may have caught the slightly warped inner drag plate, and slightly oblong drag disc that only caused drag surge when hot and at high settings.  May need a cum along pullu system and a ridgid mount to really test upper limits.  The criticle point in a battle with a monster 'money'/tournament fish is not the time to discover problems on a freshly serviced high end big game reel.

[Reel 224]

For lever drag reels a drag scale is important, especially when fishing on the high end of the drag scale.  Scales are cheep.

I'm glad this topic is here, I really would like to know how this procedure is done with the reel being set up on the rod for one. And what type of scale do you use. I just purchased a reel with lever drag and would want to adjust it properly. For that matter I would like to set up all of my reels that way just to see how much improvement it will make in my fishing.