Just got back from a 7 day LR trip on the Intrepid out of San Diego. July 23-30th. One of my friends showed up with a new Penn Torque 5 Bailess model. Crew talked him out of using it to throw jigs on Wahoo. He had several hundred yards of 40 pound spectra with a short top shot. The crew wanted to know if he thought he could get the spectra over the retrieve roller without losing a finger if a Wahoo picked up the jig and was running hard??
After thinking about that, he put the reel away and said he would return it for the model WITH a bail.
I was hoping you guys would set me straight on this issue. Can you SAFELY put the line on the roller with a hard running fish or not? Less moving parts IS attractive but not at the risk of finger loss if that is the case.
3 others fished the same model with a bail. Although we did not find any Wahoo, we did get 14,000 lbs of YFT, YT and BFT. These spinners caught lots of fish on both jigs and bait without any problem. I borrowed one and caught a nice YT on a Salas 6Xjr and the drag was very smooth. Great reels if you want to fish a spinner on a LR trip... but bailess, I am not so sure.
For wahoo, I would probably not use a bailess spinner because wahoo can get to your jig before you even have a chance to flip the bail even if you had one with a bail.
There is zero reason to fish a spinning reel bail-less.
Its a relic of the old days when reels did not have rotor brakes and older designs closed accidentally during a cast, causing loss of a treasured plug.
These days, the top reels are all manual bailed reels only (TorII, Stella, Saltiga etc) as traveling anglers often take extremely expensive plugs traveling ($100+) because they are vastly tougher than cheap lures. One GT can destroy a $40 popper, but an $80 one from Orion or Fisherman is indestructible. Point being, accidental bail closure and lure loss is not an option when halfway around the world and all of those anglers have adjusted to manual bail only. It takes about ten casts, literally, to change and you thereafter close the bail unconsciously.
Auto bail trip is a relic of cheapo spinning reels that hopefully will disappear entirely. Manual bail is the best of all worlds.
Crew was right, not a good idea to fish wahoo with a bail-less reel.
There's not really any reason to use a bail less spinner for bigger fish and as your friend found out, reasons not to!
I thought bail less spinners are usually used to keep the weight down for surf fishing and to keep the bail from accidently flipping and causing you to loose a large expensive lure. Larger spinners usually don't automatically trip the bail when you turn the handle, you have to flip it manually.
I personally would never fish a bailess spinning reel for big fish. If a fish hits the popper or jig before you can get the line under the roller, you are hosed.
The only reason that I've discovered to use a bailess spinning reel is for surf casting for smaller game fish. The bailess models prevent break offs. Sometimes the bail can flip over when casting. You can easily lose an expensive jig; meanwhile everyone around you is hooking into fish while you are tying on a new lure.
Personally, I just remove the trip lever out of my surf reels and just flip it over by hand. One of my old school 704Zs has the bailess setup. The bailess is nice when you know that you will only be casting for the day but it's really not necessary.
Thank you all for your input. I learn a lot here. I did not even realize that bail-less reels had been around so long. I was going to contact Penn about converting it for him to a bail system. However, he contacted the vendor and got a full exchange credit toward the Penn Torque 5 WITH a BAIL! He is now awaiting the NEW Penn Torque II that is coming out soon. I will be interested in seeing what the difference are between the Toque S and The Torque II S.
Quote from: FatTuna on August 10, 2016, 04:29:13 AM
I personally would never fish a bailess spinning reel for big fish. If a fish hits the popper or jig before you can get the line under the roller, you are hosed.
The only reason that I've discovered to use a bailess spinning reel is for surf casting for smaller game fish. The bailess models prevent break offs. Sometimes the bail can flip over when casting. You can easily lose an expensive jig; meanwhile everyone around you is hooking into fish while you are tying on a new lure.
Personally, I just remove the trip lever out of my surf reels and just flip it over by hand. One of my old school 704Zs has the bailess setup. The bailess is nice when you know that you will only be casting for the day but it's really not necessary.
Good call!
Some big game spinning reels are equipped the same from the factory, you need to open and close the bail by hand. I wouldn't mind if all came that way.
It's good to have a bail while fishing big game, I prefer to flip it by hand as well.
Quote from: MarkT on August 08, 2016, 03:23:12 PM
There's not really any reason to use a bail less spinner for bigger fish and as your friend found out, reasons not to!
I thought bail less spinners are usually used to keep the weight down for surf fishing and to keep the bail from accidently flipping and causing you to loose a large expensive lure. Larger spinners usually don't automatically trip the bail when you turn the handle, you have to flip it manually.
Its a relic of the past.
Back in the day of the 704Z it more or less *cannot be closed by hand* but could be tripped accidentally when the handle turned when casting causing loss of treasured wood plugs. Then, the idea of bail-less reel became the ideal way to solve the problem and with stripers and blues it really wasn't a big deal.
The big spinners now are used for Tuna and huge Jacks...bail-less is not an option as they most definitely do hit sometimes as soon as the lure hits the water (and sometimes mid air).
Manual bail is the best of all worlds.
well I had this same concern when I just got my Van Staal original model so, bailess.
I asked that same question to the guys who have been using VS for years, maybe big striper fish dont run as fast a wahoo and for sure I havent caught any big fish with mine but looks more difficult and dangerous than it really is.
I was worried about a 20-30# YT caught my jig (no wahoos on this part of baja) but as long as the fish is taking the line freely you dont have any kind of tension on the line, so it cant cut you, you just need move the running line with your fingers (wearing a glove is preferable) upright to the rod and turn the handle of the reel, the reel will catch the line effortless and then you will have a fight .
check from the minute 2:20
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SdO4fQwDIZk
maybe its not the best way to catch a running demon but I think is doable.
Hi All,
Just to add a little confusion to this discussion.
We are using a lot of spinners in our surf fishing here in southern Africa, not catching supper high speed fish, but having all the same problems of premature bail closure, especially mid cast, and the resultant problems.
A solution that I have adopted, especially with the Quantum Cabos that we are using to gresat effect, is to remove the ramp that effects the bail closure system. So, now I have reels that have to be closed manually, and can never close prematurely. This tip came off Alan Hawk's review of the reel, and is very effective. It may not be a solution to different models and makes, but it sure does the trick with the Cabos, and they are a reel that takes a lot of punishment from big sharks that we catch, and the drag is supreme.
Hope that does add too much confusion to your deliberations.
Cheers from sunny Africa,
jeri