Drag Stratergies

[mrbrklyn]

Yesterday I hit a monster Blue fish and I was losing drag on him, more than like 2:1 - going out.  So I turned the star and upped the drag, and reeled it in, but then I lost him about 2 feet from the surface (Net would have been good).  Anyone, I'm wondering if I made a mistake and if I should have just let the fish keep pulling the drag.

Ruben

[Bryan Young]

That's a hard question that really cannot be answered.  It depend on how the fish got off the hook.  There are many cases where you can do everything right and the fish still comes off.

[Alto Mare]

I lost many blues for being stubborn, I now use steel leaders, but only about a foot long.

[Jeri]

Hi Ruben,

From more than a few years of experience, it seems to me that there is an almost 'genetic' trait in anglers to not let a fish take line. We have probably all experienced it at one time or another that we hook up a good fish that starts to head to the horizon, and we instinctively reach for the drag to increase the pressure on the fish – we have all done it!!!

The thing is, and I paraphrase Hemingway – the fish is the one with the problem – it has the hook in its mouth!! So, letting it pull away at a pressure level that you have pre-determined, will eventually tire out the fish to the point that you can get line back on the beast. The point here is 'pre-determined', the useful wisdom is that a pre-set drag on a reel to release line at between 25% and 33% of the breaking strain us a very useful starting point, the fish is under pressure, and the angler is in no fear of breaking the line until he/she gets down to a half empty spool. With the majority of reels that we use these days capacity is not a big issue, so a half empty spool is not a big issue.

There is a further discussion at this point that the actual 'poundage' of the pre-set drag has now doubled from the original setting, due to change of leverage aspects of line level to the spindle, over the original setting. So, starting with a 33% drag setting, will now be at 66% value, still not compromising the integrity of the line strength. The fight continues until we are down to a further half of the line lost, and a further 'doubling' has come into effect – we are now at 99% of the original strength/drag setting – at this point failure of the line is inevitable. At the point that the reel is down to the original 'half capacity', we actually need to back off the drag, certainly not increase it.

Increasing the drag during a fight invariably puts an immediate and almost violent increase on everything – the line and especially a hook hold. Hook holds might easily start to tear the surrounding muscle and open a hole that when a slight bit of slack is allowed the hook just drops out – bye bye fish!!!

Hope that this gives you some thoughts into pre-setting your drag before you start fishing, guys on game boats have been doing it for years, setting drags on reels against a spring balance, so that you actually know what drag setting you are fishing with, whether it is on a start drag or a lever drag. After I learned this lesson – the hard way, I adopted a personal regime of drag setting at the start of every day – we even do it on our beach rods and reels.

Hope that helps.


Cheers from sunny Africa,


Jeri

[Bunnlevel Sharker]

You just gotta get it right for the fish. But sharks and rays, 90% of the time I'm running balls to the wall lock down on em

[Ron Jones]

The only time I can think of where Jeri's advice isn't the rite awnser is when you are pulling fish out of the rocks. Sometimes, especially with ling cod really deep, you gotta get em off the bottom. If your rod has the muscle you can pull them off with a deep bend to keep the drag at 30%, but if he runs into the rocks its gonna get ugly quick, putting the drag on him often helps.

Ron

[Bunnlevel Sharker]

It's the exact same with grouper, sheepshead, and rays

[Brendan]

     All math goes out the window around structure. I still check with a scale to start with. Brendan.

[Bunnlevel Sharker]

Around structure, with drag your formula is LDAP. Lock down and pray

[Jeri]

Hi All,

I think that for the situation, where you are either fishing tight into obstructions, and likely to have the problem of a fish running to obstructions, then I would still pre-set the drag to the suggested 33% option, then on hook up you have the option of increasing the drag mechanically on the reel, or use the biological drag fixed to all fishing rods – your thumb!!

In the situation of free running fish, it is a legitimate and well tried practice to either pinch down the line on to the foregrip of the rod, common in game fishing for speedy creatures, or apply pressure on to the side of the spool – both work equally well, and allow you to ease off pressure when you get to the point where the line is so taut – that it is 'singing'. This allows for a certain amount of judgement, to allow you to ease off the pressure just before the line breaks.

In the case of just winding up the drag, or even pre-setting to a higher value – 50% or even 75%, you have to be very sure of the condition of everything else in the tackle set up. Most knots will reduce the strength of the main line by 15-20%, any deterioration in the line from when first made will also be a significant factor – maybe 5% in the case of older or sun exposed nylon. The point being that start with say 50lb breaking strain nylon, that has had some exposure to strong sunlight and it will be potentially 5% weaker – 47.5lb, then tie a poor knot in the same line say a 15% - will already have weakened the line down to 42.5lbs. If you had set your drag to release at 75% of the supposed 50lb breaking strain, you are set at 37.5lbs – there is no margin for any error or even the lightest nick in the line before it will break. In a lot of cases, the actual setting that folks manage to achieve with the reels and line they are using are well below this hypothetical 75%, if you were to actually measure them, you would be quite surprised – or you have a heap of broken fishing rods.

Used to do a lot of fishing into WW2 ship wrecks in the English Channel, and for species that would hook up and reverse straight back into the wreckage – we used a combination of 33% and the biological drag, and we usually got the fish out.

There is another school of thought that you can on occasions actually get the fish to come out on a much lighter drag, almost guiding them under a light drag away from the obstructions.

There will always be those fish that just don't want to play nice, and no amount of drag pressure is going to get them going in the direction that you want.

Just some thoughts to mix into the melting pot???

Hope that helps.

Cheers from sunny Africa

Jeri