So I posted this at THT but most there are not really experts t reel mechanics......
So we lost a fish due to tackle failure! Me no gusta!!
So we were in our big tournament for the year. when we got there early at 715 we see a big sport fisher in fast reverse. I mean he was hitting harder then I've ever seen a backdown in the NE. Eventually we find out they had lost a blue marlin. In the NE they are rare like 1 out of 500 trips.
Then around 1PM a hit around 1PM on the long center ballyhoo. Probably 200 or 250 leader on a big circle hook. Zzzzzzzzzz- fish hit HARD. We started ho-ing the other lines trying to entice multiple strikes. No takers. The rod was still going hard non stop..... no pulsing just a hard core deep surge. I've caught big sharks, blue marlin giant blue fin and 250lb big eyes. Never seen a run like this. Well a relative newbie was on the rod. We fit him up with harness and plate. Fish still going hard. We had quickly pulled in the large dredges. But we had 2 diving plugs, 4 daisy chains , and at least 2 other long lines still out. The fish was smoking. SO was the reel!
In that moment I thought what a good thing I didn't pick up the rod. I envisioned over 3 hr fight was in order, stand up. Have you ever gone all the way down on a 50 wide get it all back in then have to do it 4-5 more times? LOL Things were getting serious. Captain slowed down at iour urging to dead forward. "STOP THE BOAT" was what i screamed. Oh man. We still had time but in the next 30 seconds we were going to have to do something. I'm not sure what. Cut the other lines and go hard astern? Turn and chase??
Then BING........fish broke the line. Gone
60-80 pound customer rod. Tiagra 50 wide. Momoi 100lb diamond line. Jerry Brown 130lb hollow core. Reel set to 25 lbs at strike.The line broke AT THE REEL! I looked at the reel. It was smoking. It smelled. I knew not to touch either side. Our witch doctor did. He got a large boil on his pinkie psssst just like that. Reel smoked for a few minutes. OK this reel had been serviced by a local shop. Supposedly it had a 'problem' hence the work.
When we tested the reel back at dock it showed 41 pounds of drag at strike. Yes we know that drag increases as the spool gets smaller. But come on now. 41?? I suggested it might have been because the reel needed a good work out before the drags seated themselves. Another angler told be when he tried to reel the Tiagra right afterwards it was bound up and very unsmooth. He said it was f'ed up.
Still JB 130 test HC should not have broken.
So what's your opinion.
-The HC went bad. (unknown age I can find out I assume 10 years old)
-The reel binded up...Bad reel service
-The reel just needed to be broken in
-Crud happens
-We are googans
- Nothing wrong just a big fish having its' way with us
-And what could it have been? We all thought big eye. But I'm not so sure. It could have been a mako, a hammerhead, a BM, a GBFT...it might have even been a manta . Will never know but if we had known it might have changed how we should have reacted.....
Here was what was left. YOU can see still plenty of line. Only like 75-80 gone....
(https://i.imgur.com/5tnfZAj.jpg)
So I'm confused, obviously. I'm unsure if it was the heat of the reel that might have contributed to the line failure. Was the smell (slight smoke) a sign there was too much grease? Is it possible the drag plates just hadn't been broken in properly? Several said "Pour water on it" which I've become very reluctant to do so. Some have said should NIT be done on reels this side of 1950....
And I guess another Q is 'where' to get the best Tiagra service in the Mid Atlantic area, preferably NJ? They have like 5-8 Tiagra's and if one had issues then it makes sense to service all the reels. The owner is very serious about his fishing and if he thought any others might be suspect I think he'd probably get them all done.
And that's an issue unto itself because to box em all up and ship em to Cal or even fla is not cheap!.
Rollered rod? I'd be checking all your guides for imperfections as a first port of call.
I've had a Tiagra 50 get dumped before and it didn't even get hot, but it also wasn't running anywhere near that level of drag.
That is a mystery. Even at 41 pounds of drag the line should not have broken. I am going to say the reel locked up for some reason. Ask the guy on the rod if ne had to hold the rod to keep from being pulled over. Assuming fresh line it took at least 130lbs of pull to break that line. The answer will lie in the guts of the reel. Dominick
I was at hurricane bank with an 80w tiagra and 200 lb hollow almost down to the knot, braid broke as they were clipping on a back up rig. Braid broke, figured it rubbed on the high spot. Side plate was warm but nothing like you describe
Yeah braid is suspect because braid has mysterious breakoffs/ and it digs into itself. But JB HC lays flat. And after the reel cooled I backed off the drag and it seemed smooth to the pull (by hand) and pulled freely. (Now that I think about it I pulled a little more and the braid broke again in my hand. I did remove 20' to test it on the bench......) But I have never ever seen JB 130 HC fail before this...........
And we can assume the rod guides are 100%. Almost brand new. Winthrops I think. And the line broke at the spool never touching the guides. Much less was it sawed back and forth over them like in a prolonged battle.
I have gone deep on other reels and felt the heat before.....
(https://i.imgur.com/acOBlza.jpg)
A few things to consider:
1. When drags heat up there can be a considerable loss of drag pressure
2. Could be a weak spot in the braid. You stated the fish was pulling steady so I will assume this is the first time that part of the line ever saw a fish
3. If you were fishing 41# of drag at strike, you would be at 82# or more at that level of the spool, maybe even 100#. Not counting loss of drag pressure due to heat.
4. I have never opened a Tiagra so I'm not sure what could bind due to heat expansion.
5. Did the customer thumb the spool hoping to slow the fish?
Hopefully someone more knowledgeable can chime in. But this is where I would start.
Bill
Quote from: Dominick on August 21, 2022, 09:32:02 PMThat is a mystery. Even at 41 pounds of drag the line should not have broken. I am going to say the reel locked up for some reason. Ask the guy on the rod if ne had to hold the rod to keep from being pulled over. Assuming fresh line it took at least 130lbs of pull to break that line. The answer will lie in the guts of the reel. Dominick
The guy was a newbie...but we were all there closely watching. Not knowing what type if fish it was left us clueless as how to respond. Yeah loosening the drag may have been helpful but with it stripping that quick 1. We didn't have time to think that and 2. We would not have felt confident that a newbie could adjust the drag w/o great risk. If he backed doff too quick a huge back lash might have popped up
(https://alantani.com/gallery/35/17471_03_11_21_2_17_50_357451123.jpeg)
I have to wait awhile for this one :-X
I'm the first to acknowledge this level of fishing is out of my league but I'm a little confused. I went to the Shimano website and the max drag listed for a Tiagra 50 is 26 lbs. There is also a 50 WRLSA listed at 40 lbs. The reel in your picture is older so I suspect the max drag on that reel is in the 26 lbs. range. If your reel was putting out 41 lbs, smoking, rough and hot enough to burn someone I would suspect the service that was just completed is suspect. Just my $.02 but I'm way beyond my pay grade on this one.
Quote from: rebait1 on August 21, 2022, 10:01:27 PMYeah braid is suspect because braid has mysterious breakoffs/ and it digs into itself. But JB HC lays flat. And after the reel cooled I backed off the drag and it seemed smooth to the pull (by hand) and pulled freely. (Now that I think about it I pulled a little more and the braid broke again in my hand. I did remove 20' to test it on the bench......) But I have never ever seen JB 130 HC fail before this...........
I think we have our gremlin...I did suffer an unexpected braid failure on the June 3 day, 80# braid broke with 27# of drag. Fortunately the rest of the braid was good because it was severely tested by back to back 150# bluefin. Maybe as a test peel off the rest of the HC, add a 50' of line, have your tackle shop tighten the drag to the limit of their winder, tie off the tag end and run the handle until it gets to the temperature you remember and see if the reel locks up. But after all this abuse a service will probably be needed. Bill
Quote from: rebait1 on August 21, 2022, 08:59:01 PMSo I posted this at THT but most there are not really experts t reel mechanics......
So we lost a fish due to tackle failure! Me no gusta!!
So we were in our big tournament for the year. when we got there early at 715 we see a big sport fisher in fast reverse. I mean he was hitting harder then I've ever seen a backdown in the NE. Eventually we find out they had lost a blue marlin. In the NE they are rare like 1 out of 500 trips.
Would that be the Beach Haven White Marlin Invitational?
FWIW, I think there are more Blue Marlin in the NE Canyons than we know. It's just that the thing with Blue Marlin is that we don't target them up here - they're interesting bycatch when tuna fishing. With heavier tackle and tweaking the trolling pattern and speed to target Blue Marlin my guess is that we'd see way more of them. The Canyon Runner guys seem to leader 5-10 a year and while they're out there constantly they're still fishing standup 30s and pulling green machines or shell squids for yellowfin.
Great story. Bill's #4 in his 1st post was what I was thinkin given the reels temp.
short answer, i think that your reel functioned as intended and that the braid was good and broke when it was supposed to. ok. here goes....
there are a couple of things that happen to reels during hard runs like this. first, parts heat up and expand. expanding parts will increase pressure on the drag. when you push the lever forward, it pushes down on the drag washers and bellevilles. this "tension" never decreases with heat. it can only increase. second, the fiberglass/carbon fiber composite drag washer that shimano uses in compressible on the initial throw, but i do not believe that it will be affected as the temperature increases. and third, the grease can "melt" and become more slick. i have seen this drag fade in penn senators as they heat up. drag pressures can decrease by as much as 50%. bottom line, the only way to know what the end effect would be to actually measure the drag in real time.
regarding the braid itself, i generally tell guys to toss braid after 10 years. with hard use, that might be a yearly recommendation. you will see the line start to fray. you've all seen fuzzy braid. that is a bad thing and means that it should be replaced. it still might retain 99% breaking strength, but fuzzy braid is a bad sign. obviously, a nick in the braid is also bad. braid twist is the most common problem that i see. if the braid twist is severe, it can twist back on itself, creating a knot that snaps easily. not the case for you, i'm sure, but worth mentioning for others. and finally, manufacturing defects are always a possibility, but they are so very rare as to virtually be a non-issue.
increasing drag as the line peels out is simple, really. i should measure it, but i've just never gotten around to it. in general, you set the drag when the spool is full. the physics is simple. it's like a lever arm or radius. the drag is 100% when the spool is full. the drag is 200% when the spool diameter is half, and the spool is 400% when the spool is down to a quarter. now, the, tiagra has a very large arbor. i tell guys to set the drag to 30% at strike at the top of the spool. the size of the arbor determines how much line you will have left when the spool height is down to a quarter, but your spool looks like it's down to a quarter. that would easily increase the drag to something near the breaking strength of the line.
rigging here is critical, and this is where i see shops fail their customers time and time again. there is no standard regarding how to rig a reel with braid. so i made a standard. the fact that there is not a single shop on the western hemisphere that can achieve this, is not my problem. the fact that this is overkill and no one agrees with me is also not my problem. what i can guarantee is that, under a massive load, the braid that i load onto a reel will never dig in, lock up, and break. ok, so i'm so smart. what do i do? i have a 1/3rd horsepower motor on my line winder. most motors are the size of a beer can. my motor is the size of a 5 pound coffee can. i have a line tensioner with greased carbon fiber drag washers that can deliver up to 40 pounds of perfectly smooth, consistent, tension. i always set the line tensioner with a scale. i figure out what the drag at strike will be. in the case of a 100 pound line class reel, the drag at strike would be 30 pounds. i then set the line tensioner to 2/3rd of the strike drag, so that would be 20 pounds. most shops can get more than 5 pounds. actually, most shops don't even check. most shops would say that this amount of tension is not necessary and they are probably correct. but i do this so that i can absolutely guarantee that the line will never dig in. anything less is just, well, less.
and lastly, the rod. most guys don't think about this, but the rod is 50% of the equation when it comes to landing a big fish. at maximum flex, the guides on a rod and add as much as 10%. rollers add less, bad guides or rollers and add more. it's a small thing, but these small things add up.
bottom line, i think the reel was fine, i think the rod was fine, and i think the line was fine. i think you just got beat. and this is what keeps us coming back for more!!!!!
Just once I wanna find out the answer to one of these was that someone hooked a passing submarine, and didnt stand a chance.
Did you lose your train of thought? ;D Dominick
in my case, it was a whale!!!! ;D ;D ;D ;D
East coast, bluefin tuna grounds. Maybe a very large great white shark! :ct :ct :ct
For me, it was a porpoise that fouled the leader around his tail. Jumped 3 times before I could cut him loose.
At least I got to see what was killin' my little 309.
Thanks Alan. I have friends that might belabor some aspects of what happened for years---and this might take the circular firing squad out of the equation. What I tell most people at the end of any 'sad' fishing tale....."You know what you do..?...GO FISH!!!!!"
I hooked a submarine off of the Back Island test facility.
Quote from: rebait1 on August 21, 2022, 10:01:27 PMNow that I think about it I pulled a little more and the braid broke again in my hand.
This should tell you all you need to know. I can't break 130lb braid by hand. When I've gotten hung up in a reef on 100lb tackle we have to take a wrap around a handle and drive the boat off to break it, and I'm usually in a brace position against the transom of the boat to do it.
Kind of a moot point since the reel needs respooling regardless. I'd be doing a full service anyway, because at a minimum the drag grease is presumably toast and the washer might be looking pretty glazed as well.
EDIT: Not to put too fine a point on it but I wouldn't be fishing a tournament with possibly-10-year-old braid.
I enjoy a good story , but i have to ask a few questions :
Who`s gear is it " They have like 5-8 Tiagra's and if one had issues then it makes sense to service all the reels " OK this reel had been serviced by a local shop. Supposedly it had a 'problem' hence the work.
I get a little lost here from your story about:
When we tested the reel back at dock it showed 41 pounds of drag at strike. Yes we know that drag increases as the spool gets smaller. But come on now. 41??
Then from tht post :
The rod has new components and its safe to assume they are 100%...And JB hollow core doesn't dig into itself like solid braid can. It's lays flat. And We pulled the line out right afterwards. It was free and clear, but extremely hard to get the reel to spin. It felt uneven. But when it cooled off and I backed the drag back to 0 then dialed it up. The drag was smooth to the pull. It 'felt' OK to me.
Just trying to gather the facts to give you a honest answer. :d
Yeah I don't have a very clear writing style. And I blame learning differences and private school for my inability to write!!
About 6 rods are the owners (Tiagras and really superb custom rods w winthrop guides) and the rest are Penn 50 wide two speeds. The Tiagra's get scale tested/set drags before any big event. They were all set to 25 lbs. I did not respell the reel and test the drag back at dock. (It's not my reel and it needs service)....How it jumped to 41 is unknown to me.
Another top expert told me he suspects the reel jumped to a much higher drag setting. Of course we will never know but he is a hollow core outfitter and he said...."Get all the reels serviced/and reverse the hollow core on the spool....replacing the first 100' and any sections that feel suspect (to his touch). No need to replace all of it"
Another aspect of HC he pointed out is...Based on how it's made, image done to the line may reflect for some distance on either side of damage" In other words he said the line breaking, again, very close to where it broke, was not unexpected.
BTW I only posted this to hear opinions/thoughts from all comers. In other words if you feel like making a point I greatly appreciate it. Even if you do say...THE ANSWER IS YOU ARE GOOGAN
You went out and battled something mighty, and were bested on the day... nothing googan about that.
EDIT: I guess what this thread somewhat serves to highlight is that it's the combination of a hundred little things that can make the difference between landing the fish of a lifetime, and being left wondering. Rookie angler, suspect reel, maybe questionable braid. If any one of those things was different, would it have changed the outcome? What about all three? I think part of the allure of fishing is that whole "left wondering" thing.
If you decrease the effective spool diameter by half, you will double the drag at the same clamping load.
Going from 25 to 41lbs via a full to nearly empty spool sounds about right. The forces on the turning components are not increasing though. it is just a change in leverage, not in torque.
But the pulling forces on the frame, spindle, etc are increasing. This is probably not going to be a problem on a bonafide big game reel.
And the heat generated is a function of friction and distance travelled (in this case revolutions). If the reel is emptied quickly, it also will have less time to shed heat, so the temperature can build up more.
Sounds like a braid defect might have been the problem. Gel spun polyethylene braid (or regular nylon monofilament for that matter) does not go bad over a couple of decades of storage, even in a hot garage. UV light is what kills the stuff relatively quickly. Line that was in storage away from light for a long time is at a much lower risk for failure than line that was used outdoors or stored wher daylight can get to it (even through a window) for a much shorter time. Line deep in the spool usually doesn't fail from UV exposure, as it is nearly shielded from all the layers above it, which therefore should fail first.
At least this is what the manufacturers of the base materials say. The fishing line companies say that you should buy more line as frequently as possible :)
-J
Quote from: rebait1 on August 23, 2022, 09:53:01 PMYeah I don't have a very clear writing style.
OK that is why i got confused , and i also hate to write . I see that you have many responses in the other the thread and a lot of good points . fish on !! :fish :fish :fish
BTW I only posted this to hear opinions/thoughts from all comers.
2 different times I've been spooled. Both happened so fast, virtually no time to react. To this day I still think about getting freight trained. Looking forward to my next one !!
I have fished a Tiagra a few times but never experienced anything like you describe.
Two comments:-
- My first thought when reading this and to quote you "Crud happens" is part of fishing.
- Spectra and Dynema have very low melting points. If the reel was as hot as you described and it even
touched the line somehow it would have burnt off? Sometimes the friction from a finger on the dry line
does that from casting.
Thread is not active anymore, but what Cornelius said stuck in the back of my mind. I looked around, and the melting point of GSP (AKA Spectra, AKA Dyneema) -140C/285F. Makes sense, because that is the melting point of polyethylene (aargh). If the reel is smoking lubricant, you are getting the aluminum spool in that heat range, and probably more. Line deep in the spool, or touching the spool is going to get hot.
For heated polyethylene, there is not a sudden transition from solid to liquid, the stuff just gets more and more elastic, then gooey (I think that is the material science term :) ), so the stuff progressively looses its strength with heat.
If you can't touch the spool comfortably, the line touching the spool ( or the well insulated) line near the spindle) will not be a strong.
Which leaves one question, does the line go back to normal when cooled? I could not find literature on this, but I would guess the answer is no. GSP is formed by taking a high grade of polyethylene (UHMWPE), and using a special solvent plus heat to to make a gel that can then be stretched/spun to stretch out the molecules, so that you end up with a long chain- i.e., fibers- instead of the original more compact crystalline + amorphous (random) structure. I would speculate that just melting the fibers allows the molecules to to revert back to their original structure. A fun test would be to test some braid for breakage, and then take a conuple passes with a heat gun- not enough to make any visible damage, or even better, stick it in an oven with a good thermostat a heat it up to 200F or so and let it cool.
The braid will definitely be weaker when hot, weaker if if heated under tension(it will elongate - an argument for not going overboard on the tensinon. The remaining question is will loose braid that gets heated end up weaker. My guess is that if you get over 250F, the answer is yes, around 200, dunno. They sometimes temper GSP with heat - around 180F if my memory is right.
-J
An regarding the comments on guides and friction, from what I have read, GSP has an extremely low coefficient of friction, less then Acetal (Delrin), and approaching PTFE (Teflon). Any friction from GSP over ANY grade of ceramics, or rollers or that matter, is going to be so minimal it will of no consequence in this situation. Both in terms of affecting drag, and potential wear on the line.
I am still trying to wrap my head around how the rod as a lever interacts with the drag, since the guides/spectra are not introducing significant friction. I want to say zero. the rod just bends until the force is greater than the drag. And then it unbends, sort of like a spring. Kind of wish I hadn't slept through physics :(
-J
@ jurelometer
When casting mono that is dry (water acts as lubricant) you sometimes burn your finger on the line when you control the rotational speed of the reel to avoid a backlash. This often leaves a white burn mark on the thumb and also on the line which can be seen and it hurts.
With Spectra or Dynema the the same thing happens, however it does not burn your finger nor does it leave a visible mark on the line or hurt, so it sort of goes unnoticed (though the caster should be aware he has been making bad casts)
I regularly test my line after a day's fishing by tying it to a hook at the end of my (cull de sac)road and pull on a 80 mt length to see if it's good enough to use for the next day. Mono usually takes a fairly strong pull to break, but braid just pops with a light pull. What's more, when that happens, I make a light knot and pull the braid again and it will pop again sometimes I end up with 4 pieces and the lot gets replaced.
This has happened often, I researched it and in my mind have zero doubt that friction heat is what caused that. That is one of the reasons I often say mono is the better casting line.
Now someone may say people don't cast with a Tiagra, true but the reel was hot from another cause. :cf
Quote from: Cor on September 03, 2022, 07:46:38 PM@ jurelometer
When casting mono that is dry (water acts as lubricant) you sometimes burn your finger on the line when you control the rotational speed of the reel to avoid a backlash. This often leaves a white burn mark on the thumb and also on the line which can be seen and it hurts.
With Spectra or Dynema the the same thing happens, however it does not burn your finger nor does it leave a visible mark on the line or hurt, so it sort of goes unnoticed (though the caster should be aware he has been making bad casts)
I regularly test my line after a day's fishing by tying it to a hook at the end of my (cull de sac)road and pull on a 80 mt length to see if it's good enough to use for the next day. Mono usually takes a fairly strong pull to break, but braid just pops with a light pull. What's more, when that happens, I make a light knot and pull the braid again and it will pop again sometimes I end up with 4 pieces and the lot gets replaced.
This has happened often, I researched it and in my mind have zero doubt that friction heat is what caused that. That is one of the reasons I often say mono is the better casting line.
Now someone may say people don't cast with a Tiagra, true but the reel was hot from another cause. :cf
The friction is on your thumb which doesn't have the same coefficient of friction as the guide rings and sliding friction is a function of clamping force and coefficient of friction. Also the line keeps moving but your thumb doesn't, so any individual point on of the line is probably not getting heated much at from any point of friction. There is friction from the air, but if your line is overheating from that kind of velocity, I want some casting lessons :) .
I am in the camp that the root cause for braid wear from casting is that GSP fibers are relatively brittle. Which is also why knots in braid tend to be weaker (and wear out faster) than nylon mono.
The process of braiding causes the fibers cross each other, so any force on the line (like a cast) will start causing the fibers to shear against each other. Not to mention the impact from the coils and waves in the line whacking into the front of the guide rings and frames.
I would expect (but don't know for sure) that impact/shock is going to be where the heavy damage occurs, as opposed steady force. I have noticed that the worn out braid from casting really ramps up as I get closer to the lure, which is not what would be expected from heat, but what I would expect from the line getting yanked and whacking the guides (harder at the beginning of the cast).
One funny thing about braid is that one would expect a tighter/denser weave to be stronger, but because of the shear problem, it is actually weaker for the same quantity of base fibers per meter.
I do agree with you on your astute observation on heat damage on the braid on the Tiaga. and also agree on the need to keep an eye on braid when distance casting (just disagree on the root cause). I also find mono more pleasant to cast, but I can't cast a 2 oz lure with 60 lb mono very far, or fit enough yardage in one of those nice low-profile levelwind reels. Plus I can use a single braid outfit for both casting and drop jigging, which is very useful for me. So I don't see myself going back to mono much- especially to something like 20 lb, but I do miss it. I guess it depends a bit on the style and variety of fishing for a given outfit.
-J
Quote from: jurelometer on September 03, 2022, 09:36:27 PMQuote from: Cor on September 03, 2022, 07:46:38 PM@ jurelometer
When casting mono that is dry (water acts as lubricant) you sometimes burn your finger on the line when you control the rotational speed of the reel to avoid a backlash. This often leaves a white burn mark on the thumb and also on the line which can be seen and it hurts.
With Spectra or Dynema the the same thing happens, however it does not burn your finger nor does it leave a visible mark on the line or hurt, so it sort of goes unnoticed (though the caster should be aware he has been making bad casts)
I regularly test my line after a day's fishing by tying it to a hook at the end of my (cull de sac)road and pull on a 80 mt length to see if it's good enough to use for the next day. Mono usually takes a fairly strong pull to break, but braid just pops with a light pull. What's more, when that happens, I make a light knot and pull the braid again and it will pop again sometimes I end up with 4 pieces and the lot gets replaced.
This has happened often, I researched it and in my mind have zero doubt that friction heat is what caused that. That is one of the reasons I often say mono is the better casting line.
Now someone may say people don't cast with a Tiagra, true but the reel was hot from another cause. :cf
The friction is on your thumb which doesn't have the same coefficient of friction as the guide rings and sliding friction is a function of clamping force and coefficient of friction. Also the line keeps moving but your thumb doesn't, I do move my thumb specifically to reduce friction on one spot and also lesson the pressure.
so any individual point on of the line is probably not getting heated much at from any point of friction. There is friction from the air, but if your line is overheating from that kind of velocity, I want some casting lessons :) .
Those lessons come for free, even a few beers thrown in, but you will have to visit Cape Town. I tried to read up on coefficient of friction but gave up. ???
I would expect (but don't know for sure) that impact/shock is going to be where the heavy damage occurs, as opposed steady force. I have noticed that the worn out braid from casting really ramps up as I get closer to the lure, which is not what would be expected from heat, but what I would expect from the line getting yanked and whacking the guides (harder at the beginning of the cast).
I have often commented on the wooliness of all braid after a period of use but never been able to determine why precisely this happens. That it is a result of casting I am certain of, that it is worse towards the front of the (towards the lure) line is also true. I had also expected that a "spinning reel" would do more damage to that type of line because of the way the line passes through the guides in large coils, but from questioning my mates that use that type of tackle it appear not to be so. So then I again start thinking about friction LOL The most braking of the reel is required shortly after the release of the casting weight, not only the most, but also the hardest (most pressure) and sometimes of the longest duration. so that would be on the front section of the line.
One funny thing about braid is that one would expect a tighter/denser weave to be stronger, but because of the shear problem, it is actually weaker for the same quantity of base fibers per meter.
I do agree with you on your astute observation on heat damage on the braid on the Tiaga. and also agree on the need to keep an eye on braid when distance casting (just disagree on the root cause). I also find mono more pleasant to cast, but I can't cast a 2 oz lure with 60 lb mono very far, or fit enough yardage in one of those nice low-profile levelwind reels. Plus I can use a single braid outfit for both casting and drop jigging, which is very useful for me. So I don't see myself going back to mono much- especially to something like 20 lb, but I do miss it.
I guess it depends a bit on the style and variety of fishing for a given outfit. As always very true.
-J
With suitable tackle and fairly limp 60 lb mono and 2 oz weight I can probably manage 60 mt but increase casting weight to 3 oz would add 15 mt. Years back we used to fish with 60 lb and modern mono is limper, softer and thinner so will add a few meters as well. When casting at Yellowfin Tuna from a boat I use 60 lb and a fairly short rod which is not ideal casting equipment but a trade off.
There are two aspects to this - how/why the line itself broke and what was done in the way of angling and boat handling after the bite.
As far as the line itself breaking, assuming the line was in good condition (braid used as backing tends to stay in reasonably good shape as the working line is mono and the braid only comes out on a decent fish - but if multiple hookups on tuna regularly happen there could be issues with crossed lines etc - it's something definitely worth checking for), the last few posts may well have identified the reason - excessive heat generated within the reel affecting the line. This is a known issue with mono, but I hadn't realized that gel-spun/braid was also susceptible. That being the case, chucking water over the reel might actually have helped, hmmm...
The more important question is how best to avoid a similar breakoff in the future. On the angling side, when you are down deep in the spool, like half spool or less, you need to be aware of the increase in drag that happens when the line is that far down (and also the pressure at the fish end from all the line the fish is now towing around). If you are at half spool and the fish is still screaming line off, you need to think hard about easing the pressure on the line (ie. reducing drag). But you'll still need to go after the fish to avoid getting spooled.
This is also where you need to think about the objective of your fishing. If you are trying to get multiple hookups on tuna you will inevitably end up losing line, sometimes a lot of line - which, if the fish you've hooked is a big blue marlin, massively complicates things. A big blue on a 50W will not stop on that first run unless you are very lucky - you'll need to get after it, the quicker the better. Crews after big marlin, in Hawaii and elsewhere, fish only four or five rods (130s), and often have only enough time to clear one side of the boat before having to get after the fish. I have a photo, taken some years ago by the wife of the angler who was in the chair, of a Tiagra 80W looking much like the reel in your photo (except still connected to the fish), the rod angled forward as we went after the fish, the cockpit cluttered with some of the lures and teasers that my skipper liked to fish (two teasers, two flat lines, two short riggers, two long riggers and a center line), and a couple of us still trying to bring in the rest of the gear. We released the fish but it was hairy for a while!
A couple of additional thoughts/notes:
- if you have to back the drag off, place your thumb where you want the drag to be and only then back the drag off with your forefinger. Your thumb acts as a stopper preventing the drag from going back too far. Guess how I figured this one out...
- If you don't see the bite (or see the fish jumping etc) and know it's a blue marlin, if it's still smoking after half spool it's more than likely you have "him" on and need to react accordingly. If you have a lot of gear in the water, work on clearing one side of the boat, or at least enough of one side that lets the skipper turn after the fish. Be warned, as the boat turns it will accelerate your line loss, so don't wait too long to start doing this.
- blue marlin may be rare in your area but be aware of signs that they may be around ie. lots of peanut dorado, skipjack and small yellowfin and especially other boats hooking up with them!
Good luck on your next hookup!