Topwater Caranx Ignobilis: Giant Trevally (GT) > Tackle & Techniques

Dogfight Drag

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Ben Gudgeon:
Hi ,

I have a new dogfight and read in some older posts on this site that people had upgraded the drag, I wondered what reasons where behind an upgrade.
More pressure?
Smoother drag under load?
Did you use carbontex? With grease?
how much better was the final result?
What were the steel washers like ?  Properly flat?

Cheers Ben

Colin P:
I don't have this reel Ben but a friend of mine does.

If you look thru previous posts I think you'll find that most people upgraded the drag washers because of start-up inertia i.e. they experienced a noticeable jerk when line was first released via the drag. As far as I'm aware, the drag performed fine once it was "running".

Most used carbontex washers & seemed to feel there was some improvement in both start-up inertia & ongoing performance.

Brandon Khoo:
Ben, if you have a brand newie 2009 model, you should not even need to think about this. Even if you want to convert to carbontex, you can't as the carbontex washer you buy from Smooth Drag are made to match the old steel washers, not the new. In any event, irrespective of what Daiwa choose to call their new drag washers, they sure look like carbontex.

The main reason why people had to change their drags was the perception that it wasn't up to it for high drag pressures. The drag would sometimes stick and in some cases, ultimately jam under high pressure. It did not perform once it was "running" as some of them would have jammed by that stage. Like with a lot of things you read on the internet particularly with regard to equipment failure, this issue assumed absolutely legendary status and I think the number of really serious incidences were significantly lower than what many of us read. I myself only know of a small number of cases where I know the angler personally who experienced this. Of course, that is countered by the fact that many of us never even gave this a chance to happen by changing the drag washers out of the box immediately.  The old drag performed fine in many cases too, (to be fair) as I had friends who continued to use the factory drag.

In any event, the new drag looks to be exemplary.

Chris Young:
My Dogfight, Saltiga 6000 and all of my spare spools etc still run std drag washers :o. I personally think you don't need to upgrade untill it's broke. As Brandon has pointed out the interweb can cause Kaos over some issues.
I should point out that I don't run rediculous drag pressures, my max drag would be about 15 kg. If you are going to fish drags of 20-30kg  ::)I think you will have trouble with any drag material, specially at start up

Chuen Fan:
Brandon, all the 2009 Dogfights that I have seen still seem to run the same old standard washers. I even pulled apart a drag stack on a brand newie last Friday night and it still had the same washers. Maybe these are still daiwa's old stock???  ??? ???

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