Penn Torque 25: is magging it possible?

[Joker]

you are always going to thumb the spool . that why the expression ''educated thumb''.
here the deal......you will always get farther casts from correctly thumbing the spool than you will with any braking device. when casting a coventional the problem exists about halfway in the cast the line starts to balloon off the spool because the spool is now faster than the line going out this is when the breaking or slowing should occur. so with an educated thumb there is hardly any contact with the spool on the first part of the cast
and more in the mid flight........with any breaking device mags or mechanical the breaking is more strong in the begining and lighter in mid flight............in addition with an educated thumb you can account for wind direction ...some times i hardly make contact with the spool when i have a north wind at my back

Sure makes sense. I do see the line "fluffing" more in mid-flight. I just thought it was due to the spool spinning faster as the sinker is about to reach its maximum velocity.

[Joker]

Im not so sure about the thumbing, if you look at Danny Moeskops who holds pretty much all the world casting records, he does not touch the spool, he uses mag control

I also saw some of Danny's youtube videos. Noticed that most, if not all, the distance casters use the "knobby mag" to control the spool's speed.

This obviously comes with practice and I'm sure that there must be some birds nest in between the successful casts.

It was those videos that got me thinking about magging my reel.

[CapeFish]

Apparently he follows the same approach on the beach, he has visited South Africa and Namibia for bronze whaler fishing and believe he used a Saltist 50 specifically because it has centrifugal brakes as he says that everytime you thimb the spool you loose distance. I believe that he managed distances from the beach that others battled to get from wading. Look he is obviously really brilliant and has an incredible skill, it takes years of practice to put such enormous force into a cast and have the confidence to take your thumb completely off the spool. I am trying it with my Saltist 30 and so far so good but am not sure if this will work when the waves are trying to break over your head. Am keen to see what distance I get if I cast without the brakes and thumb it more again. With my Penn Fathom 40 engaging a few of the brakes has helped a lot and definetely getting better distance, but the damn thing is still so fast that you have to thumb it when the sinker approaches the down turn point.

It is strange that no other manufacturers are developing something similar to Shimano's DC. It supposedly does exactly what the long distance casters do with the mag nob, it lets the spool excelerate and then applies a stronger force and then lets go again as the sinker travels down. MAybe it is too expensive or the market is too small?

[Joker]

Apparently he follows the same approach on the beach, he has visited South Africa and Namibia for bronze whaler fishing and believe he used a Saltist 50 specifically because it has centrifugal brakes as he says that everytime you thimb the spool you loose distance. I believe that he managed distances from the beach that others battled to get from wading. Look he is obviously really brilliant and has an incredible skill, it takes years of practice to put such enormous force into a cast and have the confidence to take your thumb completely off the spool. I am trying it with my Saltist 30 and so far so good but am not sure if this will work when the waves are trying to break over your head. Am keen to see what distance I get if I cast without the brakes and thumb it more again. With my Penn Fathom 40 engaging a few of the brakes has helped a lot and definetely getting better distance, but the damn thing is still so fast that you have to thumb it when the sinker approaches the down turn point.

It is strange that no other manufacturers are developing something similar to Shimano's DC. It supposedly does exactly what the long distance casters do with the mag nob, it lets the spool excelerate and then applies a stronger force and then lets go again as the sinker travels down. MAybe it is too expensive or the market is too small?

I heard about his, Danny's, visit to the tip of Southern Africa.

Wrt the Saltist 30BG, I also get some good distace at the moment. The centrifugal brakes does spoil one a little. I used the Tor30 for bigger in-eds and the Tor20, was my in-eds reel. since casting the smaller Daiwas, Sl30 and Saltist30BG, my thumb has lost some of its "education"

Still playing around with the Penn Torque25. Have added a rare earth magnet, but still at the experimenting stage. Nothing permanent yet. So far the magnet is working, but i find a strange noise when casting now.

Is that the magnetic current that is causing this new sound?
Can this one magnet, lets say, "disturb" the spin of the spool?

[Jonnybravo]

Joker, what was your conclusion in regards to the mag?  I have a 25n I'd like to keep but it is hell trying to cast unless I'm lob casting it.

[Jeri]

Hi  Guys,

Joker: Initially I see a possible problem area for you in that you are coming down with the 25 from larger reels, and this presents some issues. Firstly these smaller reels have to spin faster to get the same metreage out, so the spool has a need to spin faster for the same distance achieved with a larger diameter reel, say a 40 or 50. Also the smaller spool is lighter, so its resistance to spinning in much less, so immediately 'out of the box', it will spin much faster than the larger reels. This is obviously your first problem area, being that the reel will spin much faster than you are used to.

The next possible issue is that your casting style might be perfect for your larger reels, as they are slower spinning, but with this much faster reel, the style might not be a smooth as is needed for the much smaller reels' speed. Any slight jerky action in the cast will be punished by the reel. Suggest that you calm down your cast a little, and see how that effects what you get in the way of distance achieved and controlled flight.

Before going to the 'mag' solution, perhaps if you pull the shields off, and fill the bearings with grease. This will have the effect of slowing the spool speed down, and this might then allow you to get the reel under control during the cast. Once you are going down that road, you can progressively vary the spool braking in the spool bearings by perhaps filling them with either less viscous greases or even a mixture of oil and grease.

The point for distance casting is that you want the reel set up so that it is just at the point of getting 'wild', and then learn to add the slight thumbing of the spool to control those 'wild' moments during the cast – the educated thumb. Because you need all the initial speed of the spool in the very early part of the cast to get the sinker away and high, and this is when few problems occur, but as the sinker slows down, and is drawing less line from the spool, the spool hasn't slowed any, so the spool is still giving out loads of line – result – one crow's nest at distance.

I have 'tuned' reels for personal use down to the point where I have trimmed a single brake block in half – to get just that amount of 'wild' feeling from the spool, and then control it with my thumb. Other variants with magnets, especially in Europe, have been to switch magnets around, changing polarity and effect to do just that same 'tuning' – to effect an amount of braking that is best for that individual. One reel that I do use a lot, that spins like a demon in the 'un-magged' form is the AVET, but the mag format is too slow, so have actually cut the magnet to control its proximity to the spool, effectively 'tuning' the reel to suit my style of casting.

The point of all the various methods of introducing braking – magnetic or centrifugal, is that they are limiting the top speed potential of the spool – limiting maximum rpm. Slowing the bearings down will certainly do this for you, you just then need to get the right 'recipe' of oil, grease or both to tame the bearings to give you that braking effect – much cheaper than taking drills and tools to a perfectly good reel.

With all, the small spool reels like the 25 there is a certain amount of mechanical braking, as the spool line level reduces – so less line per revolution occurs – which is a beneficial situation, as it is happening at the end of the flight, as the sinker is slowing down.

Another suggestion while you are still going through the development of setting up this reel for your style of fishing, is to perhaps use slightly heavier line, go up a size or 2 in line thickness, and a lot of the wildness will mellow out, as the thicker line is heavier, and you will get to low spool braking earlier. Also it is easier to pick out the crow's nests with thicker line.

A couple of points about possibly looking at emulating the tournament casters are that they are using extremely powerful casting styles that generate huge initial speeds of sinker and spool – they are also using seriously powerful rods with quite low sinker weights. These all contribute to a much more different situation to how we are fishing in southern Africa, akin to just driving a car to racing in Formula 1. They are casting with a seriously fast reel, certainly faster than your 25; and then controlling the loose coils during the very distant flight of a very powerful cast. To go down the route of analysing their problems and comparing them to your own is a potential problem, as they are starting off from a hugely different stand point.

A closing thought is that the Torque 25 is basically a revised version of the Fathom 25, which in turn was a revised mass market version of the very specialised Mag 525 and all the subsequent versions of that reel that were specifically built for the European surf casting market – but prior to the Torque, they all had varying degrees of mechanical and magnetic braking, which has subsequently been lost on the Torque 25. Has this reel been designed for a different market – boat fishing???

Hope that all helps.

Cheers from sunny Africa

Jeri

[Jonnybravo]

Thanks for that read.  I'm going to take your advice and grease pack the bearing.  That and more practice