"Wayne B" wrote in message
...

On Fri, 07 Jun 2013 14:05:34 -0400, "F.O.A.D." wrote:

1. Before you burned out your reel (btw, Penn has or had a rebuilding
service), what poundage were you setting the drag at? There are
relatively inexpensive mechanical fishing line drag weight scales
that
tell you this. Obviously, on your defunct Penn, you could not set the
drag at 200#. Usually, drag is set at only a reasonable percentage of
what is available. I fished for stripers on the Bay here with 8 or
10#
test, with the drag set at 4 pounds. But, then, I was either holding
the
rod or sitting next to it.


I'll check with Penn when I get home, thanks. I have no idea what
the drag poundage was set for. I usually set it up fairly firmly but
loose enough that I can still strip some line out by hand. I'm
guessing 15 to 20 pounds. If I get a big strike that is stripping
out a lot of line, I'll turn the drag down some more. The biggest
fish that I've landed so far was a large Mahi that was a tad over 5 ft
long and weighed in the 40 to 50 pound range. He was still stripping
out line against full drag 10 to 15 minutes after I hooked him.

2. From what I understand from your posts, the real problem is that
you
might not notice right away that you have a "hit," and then it takes
you
a bit of time to get from wherever you are on your boat to where the
rod
is located. I don't know how noisy your boat is when the engines are
running, but perhaps an answer might be to put some sort of "tell" on
the road you can hear from where you are piloting the boat.

I used to have that problem when I had the rods at the stern of the
boat but I've moved the rod holders up to the flybridge where I hear
the strikes right away. I still have to throttle back to idle, shift
to neutral if it sounds big, go to the back of the flybridge, grab the
rod, etc. Probably takes 5 to 10 seconds, more if we're rolling a
lot..

------------------------------------------------

Heh. I am picturing a 52' Grand Banks with a set of outriggers for
your next cruise.

We got our first tuna when I had the 37' Egg Harbor Sportsfish. It
was set up as a fishing machine with outriggers, huge fishwell, live
bait well and a cockpit freezer. Plus, I had purchased three tuna
rods with those big, 2 speed Shimano reels. They looked like this
one:

http://www.thehookupcapecod.com/images/BFT_cc_blueBack_1000px.jpg

So, the first time we hooked up, my brother was on the flybridge in
the chair beside me. We were shooting the **** when all of a sudden
the line on one of the outriggers let loose. My brother flew off the
flybridge down to the cockpit shouting "Fish ON, Fish ON". My
younger son and son-in-law were also aboard at it was quickly decided
that my brother would have the honors of dealing with the fish. This
was our first and we were novices.

He fought it for quite a while as I tried to do what the boat
captain's job is ... keeping the fish on the stern and backing down as
required to help keep line tension. I thought I was doing a great job
but my brother (who is athletic and quite strong) was obviously
tiring quickly. He kept yelling at me to "Slow the boat down,
dammit!" I was going backwards, but he kept insisting that I was
pulling the fish forward making it hard for him to reel it in. Well,
I wasn't. When we finally got it up to the stern and then into the
cockpit we discovered my brother had the reel in the "high speed"
position. He didn't know it had two speeds.