Big GT techniques

[Kasey Leong]

How does 20kg+ of initial drag setting sound with one foot against the gunnel while boat pulls away from reef at several knots and trying to palm the spool. Still got drilled by a record fish in 50 metre depth.

*sigh*.... i wanna go back to newcal...

[Brandon Khoo]

The only person I know fishing drag like that is Ed Lester,one of the Nomad guides. We've been looking forward to seeing him go swimming!

[Jay Burgess]

you should see if u can get ur hands on some videos of Okubo popping for GTs.... particularly legend 5. you will be surprised to see how much drag you can comfortably hold onto using the 'straight pull' or 'okubo style' as some of my mates now call it

i think the AO boys mentioned okubo only loses a few fish a year (truly unstoppables) ... considering how much he fishes when i first heard it i was 

Like luke mentioned, u need a boat pulling, without which you have already lost half the fight.

if any of ur mates are around perth anytime soon i might be able to help you out with some dvds.... my new cal one might even be done in time!  (though i think that shows more bad technique than good  )

or, i might just fly up... i think im coming to exxy sometime in april...

Cheers Kasey even if you could post them or something that would be good... vid sounds awesome.

Seriously though, you need to come up to Karratha sometime, especially once I've got a boat... there's some monsters 

[David Clumpner]

How do you measure your drag?

Also, talking about lines breaking on the hit - why not have a lowish-drag setting for the hit and as soon as the fish is hooked, increase your drag?  Do things happen too fast to be messing with your drag?

[Jon Li]

Hi David ,

The answer is definitely NO , even with high drag set and moving boat there were time there isn't time to stop big GT from " reefing  " you which result in lost lure .

With other species such as tuna , yes you may have time due to no obstructions but with less than 300m in the spool , you want to be very calm when turning that drag knob lest you turn it too much and resulting in torn off or worse line break .

It's best to set the drag prior to your casting the lure , the level of drag set depends on the species n habitat of the fish you are targeting .

Jon .