Spooling braided line, carbonex washers

[Reel Beaker]

Don't forget to grease the cf with Cals or similar it keeps it smooth with lower startup inertia. You wont necessarily get more drag with greased cf but it will be smoother. Lapping the metal washers also helps.

Oiled felt can work quite well for drags particularly at small drag numbers. But at higher settings I find it gets 'snatchy' - stick - slip - stick - slip etc. Also with long running fish I find felt can loose effectiveness during the fight - requiring tightening of the drag - on one occasion the felt drags failed almost completetly - starting with 15lbs of drag by the end of the fight I had approx 4lb. In the past I've had felt drags be useless after a season of catfishing - I've never had a failure with cf.


Hope that helps a bit - Chris.

What is lapping metal washers?

Why did your drag drop with long running fish? As more line on your spool get depleted, isnt your drag suppose to increase by a factor of 2 when it gets to half its original capacity?

[Swami805]

Lapping is using a flat surface with an abrasive to try and make the washer as flat as possible so it has even contact with the drag material. Like sanding but on a flat surface.
The felt drags lost the ability to provide friction so the drag numbers decreased

[Tiddlerbasher]

As Sheridan said - when I checked the felt washers they had a hard glazed surface, almost burnt looking. Thus reducing the coefficient of friction to a fraction of what I started with.