We catch a lot of bull redfish and bull drum on 30, 40, and 50 lb braid and never have any issues on either spinning reels or level winds. The key is to have a good amount of tension when originally spooling the reel. I'd bet by now, most of our reels have been packed under the tension of reeling in a big fish. But we have two techniques for putting the line on the reels under tension. We've moved away from mono backing in favor of the little stickers that come with the power pro or enough duct tape to wrap around 3/4 of the bare spool.
1. With new line, my son holds the spool with the new line on it so that it can spin around a pencil, and he applied resistance with his thumbs while I reel in the line with the reel mounted on the rod where it will be used. The rod should bend a bit to ensure good tension.
2. With used line (usually transferring from a level wind to a spinning reel after a number of breakoffs has reduced the amount of line remaining on the level wind to < 200 yards), we do a rod to rod transfer with my son holding the source rod with the drag set for appropriate tension, and me reeling in the line on the destination rod.
In the past, I've also had one of the children walk all the line out in a big open space and "reel them in" maintaining appropriate tension. This works, but takes a big open space and is much harder than the other two methods.
|