One of the things that has helped me land fish faster is to use the entire drag range. In these two speed lever drag reels, I set the drag to 30% at strike and then pray for 50% at full. With the Okuma Makaira line, you get that straight out of the box. With the Penn VISX, you have to grind down the cam, but it's worth the effort. Here is the drag profile when you grind the cam of a 50 visx.
Here is the Mak 50 straight out of the box!
To map out the drag profile, you need the line stickers from onecooltuna.com and an 8mm hole puncher from Amazon. Mapping out the drag on your own reel can be very eye opening!!!
That's great and much better than using tape and a felt pen.
I have Alan do this to all my reels when I send them to him for inspection and service and it helps out immensely. It makes it real easy to know how hard you can pull and give Alan the correct answer when he asks what's your drag set at!
A couple of my reels are missing stickers so I just ordered the hole punch and will re-label my reels when it gets here.
As a fisherman I want every advantage I can get and this combined with setting the drag by scale is a simple one with HUGE advantages!
Wow, Genius.
I'll be pulling the drag scale out soon.
Thanks for the tip Alan!
Steve
I learned to fish with star drag reels and after several decades got good at adjusting the drag as needed, and thumbing the spool.
Then I "discovered" lever drags reels and a whole new world opened up, the concept of knowing about where your drag setting is was amazing. In the first 3 years using LD reels I landed 5 YFT over 200# with my PB a 258# fish caught with 28# at full.
Then Alan messed up my reels by putting these little stickers on it and now I know much better where my drag is at. I love them.
I still adjust the drag setting by feel when fighting a fish but I know where I am at now.
BTW, I run my drag settings a bit lighter than Alan but I have a good excuse, I am older and out of shape.... round is not a good shape.