Fishing Gear Fails

[boon]

I bought a fairly early production Okuma Metaloid 5N. The early ones had a very heavy foot on them that did not fit well into most rods that would balance with a reel that small.
My wife was fishing with it on a 30lb Okuma rod (you would think Okuma+Okuma would be friends, right?) and we were fishing on a large "workup" mostly comprised of roughly 4-5lb Kahawai (Arripis Trutta, for those following along at home).
Suddenly my wife hooks what could only have been a Yellowtail, which had the rod absolutely horseshoed and the reel humming. She tried to get a lift on it, and the rod bent right through the butt, which was evidently too much for the not-very-good fit between the reel seat and the foot of the little Metaloid, and the reel popped out. She made a grab at it but only managed to knock it into freespool as it fell over the side of the boat, which was probably a somewhat good thing as the reel likely would have otherwise smashed all the guides off the rod on the way to a watery demise.

So the reel is sinking to the bottom in about 100ft of water, braid is still furiously streaming out through the rod with a very unimpressed YT on the end, which promptly finds the reef and busts off.

I get ahold of the braid and start hand-lining it in, but of course the reel is in freespool so I'm just spooling it out, while trying to keep the boat directly above the reel so the braid doesn't get into the reef. 5 minutes or so later and I've wound all 300m of braid off the reel into the boat, but I've come up tight; the reel is stuck in the reef. I drove around it in circles trying all sorts of angles and eventually just pulled harder on it, and wonder of wonders, I got the reel out of the snag and retrieved it into the boat.

I wrote to our local Okuma wholesaler (Composite Developments) with this tale, including the video of me successfully getting the reel back.
They posted me (completely free of charge!) a full set of new bearings for the reel, and the revised reel foot, which is much slimmer. Fantastic customer service I must say, which has been my consistent experience with CD.

[oc1]

Great story Boon