Reel Repair by Alan Tani

The thing is when you get spooled, something happens next. The weak point is discovered. Maybe it's your leader knot maybe hook knot, maybe your arbor knot, maybe your reel's gears.

But if it's the arbor knot you lost a full spool of line in addition to the fish. And polluted the ocean with a full spools worth of braid, whose ecological impact is unlikely to be limited to that one fish on the hook.

Picked up a Penn 710 spinfisher green version, a Seeker classic series 196 8ft rod and a Dam West Berlin Quick Super reel.The rod is like new and I paid $25 at thrift store needed a tip replacement, the two reels came in a lot with some Newell aluminum spools and some older Penn spools from eBay from a seller in Hawaii for $45. Going to take the Quick Super reel out for some surf fishing once I get her all cleaned,lubed and spooled with fresh 25lb line. Rod will be fished for Yellows and Calicos with my Cortez conversion Narrowed Penn Squidder with fresh 20lb yozuri as a pairing at the Coronado islands here real soon. 

Okay, I am going to do a PSA here for a lot of folks following this thread that may be into vintage reels and are reading and learning from the sidelines:  DO NOT tie off to your spool on the little mushroom nub and call it good.  Convenient and easy - yes.  That is only pressed in, and it will fail when you don't want it to.  Sure, you can tie off to it as a starting point, but then use a good knot that actually wraps around the spool.  "But John, if a fish spools me down that far what difference does it make?"  If a fish spools you, yeah you're pretty much screwed.  But if your rod happens to go overboard... seen it happen, and when you are handlining up from a rats nest tangle (especially if you kicked the reel into free spool to give him slack while the deckhand was working on the science project in front of him) you will be thankful that the final connection to your rig is solid.  I have seen outfits brought back from the deep twice; and while I was not on last year's SOA trip I believe it even happened there. It's not an uncommon occurrence, and if tying an extra knot can help avoid the heartbreak...- john

Joe- That has been my experience.  I have not seen a rig like what you have posted but that certainly looks like it would be effective and easy to make one up with materials we all have around. - john

Found an incomplete delfino, missing a spool, drag knob and handle knob. Otherwise intact and just grease stuffed. Of course bail wouldn't click over on rotation and spring was not working. Removing rotor was the usual heat, penetration oil routine. Much to my surprise see below in pictures. I was able to reload spring so bail functions. Zangi factory made a rotor with no plunger system for those who like to shut bail manually! The rotor has no place for access and was not retrofitted but completely different. The handle knob is easy fix. Now to find a spool and drag knob!!!

I will say , when you bring fish up slow they generally do not get the bends .
    When they do ,I send them down 1/3 the depth that we are fishing and hold them there.
    you will feel them start reviving and swim off .  If they don`t swim strong go half way down .    I like to use the wire descender fish will swim down and self release 

   I know ,there is a lot of members of the pig tail club .

So I unspooled and respooled the reel in question. Knot sat about a quarter inch from the spool arbor. When I tried to cinch it down to see if I could skip retying it pulled through instead.

Never trust another man's knot. Never. Lesson learned. It's like I wanna give people the benefit of the doubt. But sometimes I wanna stop.

Any time you catch a fish it's a good day!   

I'm going to be quite controversial and say that I strongly suspect they take fish that have suffered significant barotrauma and send them off to die where we can't see it, instead of them floating off on the surface. Once barotrauma has occurred, the damage is done, you're not fixing that fish by sending it down to the bottom, you're just letting the pressure squash all the ruined organs back inside them.

The only study I could find states (emphasis mine):
Initial post-release mortality (defined as all mortality events observable from the vessel while fishing) across all devices was relatively low (7.5%) in capture depths less than 100 m, but increased significantly to 16.4% at capture depths from 100 to 135 m.

So beyond 100m depth, 16.4% of released fish died in such a way that it was observable from the vessel that they had died, how many more died a couple of hours later, or sank to the bottom, or drifted off a little before surfacing?

If you've caught your limit of a species affected by barotrauma, move on and fish for something else. You're probably still killing fish, but you get to feel better about it because you sent them to the bottom first.