Hi Everybody,
I really hate to sound ignorant and hope this question doesn’t have me looking that way. For the years I have been fishing and building fishing rods I think that I am the only person I know of that has put the drag setting on the labels of a fishing rods. I do include the line rating and lure weight but I just wonder why this is not done more often. So many stories I have heard of rods breaking on the hook set and I am sure you builders have heard them as well so it just puzzles me why manufacturers don’t include a drag rating on the labels.
I would think that a great percentage of the fishing public would not know the proper drag settings for the line rating on a rod and to go a step further the strength of the knots they have used for the rig they are fishing in a lot of cases. I still see fishermen that have been out there fishing for as long as I have been alive tying up some stuff that I would trust bait to let alone a nice sized fish.
Is it just me?


Tight wraps and lines,
Wylie

Wylie - I have the opportunity to watch a lot of "fishermen" set hooks. I will bet that over 90 percent of them will lock down the reel drum on a casting reel with their thumb during hook set. I think that is one of the primary reasons that more casting rods get broken during hook set than spinning rods. This along with the guides on bottom gives a spinning rod longer life as compared to a casting rod with conventional guide placement.

Gon Fishn



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 01/16/2006 10:29AM by Bill Stevens.

It is not you, it is most of the remaining world. A serious fisherman will set their drag with a scale and keep the line weight within the design limits of the blank. Most of the guys I fish with and give my rods to are trying fish as light as possible because that's how we get our jollies but, I have seen more than once, a light spinning outfit with 50# spectra.
When I see this, I always remind myself over and over:
"genius has limits but, stupidity knows no bounds"

Thank you gentlemen I seem to feel the sanity flowing once again,
I sure can see the star drag issue causing breakage.
Okay I am guilty of the fifty pound line on the fifteen pound rated rod but it was only for testing the blanks the fun way. Yep, surf casting three ounces on that little six-foot rod for all I had. Sure made me look like a screwball out there and the shark I hooked into had me feeling like one with the Rod Bond cracking and the bowing to the fish to feed him more of the reel and not so much of the rod that was bent to the reel seat.
Hey I just had an epiphany! Maybe 90 percent of America is out there trying to improve the sport we all love so much. :P
No I haven't cracked yet!



Tight wraps and lines,
Wylie

It would do little good to put the drag setting on most rods until reel manufacturers start calibrating their drags systems so the fishermen can match the reels setting, to the rod “drag ratings”. But if you could enroll the reel makers to do so would be awesome.

I am not sure how that would work with the settings on the reels. Some reels do have a preset like the Avet I have planned soon but with waring drag discs and such it would make that a pretty tough engineering feet.
Personally I always use a digital scale when I set my drags. With the Avet I ahve planned I am going to have to make sure I get it set because the rod it's going to be for could be over powered by the reels drag. This Avet's drag can put on 16 to 20 pounds drag and the rod will be rated for 15 to 40. I know I could go with a Penn HT-100 drag system doing about 10 to 11 pounds with this rod but the casting will not be the same and the drag will most likely be burnt on a Penn in the first year of toying with the sturgeon. I have seen many Penns smoked by the sturgeon since I have moved here.





Tight wraps and lines,
Wylie