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

A strange equipment failure

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Mark Harris:
Guys, I recently had a very odd problem and would like to know if anyone else has experienced this, or whether it was just a freaky one-off.

Hooked up a to a very nice GT. Was fishing 11 kgs of drag, with PE8 on a SW18000. Line peeled off very easily for about 5-6 seconds then suddenly came to jolting stop with the fish still pulling VERY hard. My immediate thought was the drag stack had failed somehow, maybe with a washer exploding. The fish was pulling very hard and I was just about hanging on, and then the line pinged. Was left in a bit of state of shock after that  and I was sure the Stella drag had failed and locked up somehow.

However examination soon explained what had happened. The line had impacted into a tiny gap between the top of the spooled braid and the spool rim.  I will say right away that I am close to obsessive about spooling my braid very tightly indeed, so this was not  a case of impacted line due to soft spooling. The spooled line was rock hard.  There was a tiny, only just visible gap between the top of the very tight spooled braid and the spool rim, and the line had impacted into there about 4 mm. It was in so tight it was impossible to pull it out manually until I got home.

I have never had this problem before and I hope it never happens again. It seems that somehow the line lay had left this tiny gap. I should also say that there was no problem with the winding shape of the spool - very even with no coning at all.

Anyone ever heard of anything like this happening before or have an explanation?  I will re-spool very carefully but I am nervous about it happening again.

Jon Li:
Hi Mark ,

Did you spool the line manually or or the spool was filled by detaching it from the reel n put in a machine ? When filling the line manually , the line lay will have " criscross " pattern while when using machine may tend line " burying " , hence what you experienced .

Mind you , I have seen line burying when one not keeping constant line tension during manual line filling process due to fatigue by the winder at the time .

Other than that , it may be just one of freak things that happen despite our best efforts .

Jon .   

Mark Harris:
Hi Jon

Thanks so much for your input.

It was spooled manually using a simple line winder device for tension. This style of device:



I never use spooling machines and I do try to be aware of the need to maintain consistent tension when spooling up, even when it  becomes arm-breakingly hard.

My feeling is that it was probably just one of those unfortunate things that happen. It is preying on my mind though!

Adrian Braun:
Nice spooling device mark. did you make it yourself or can it be bought? thanks

Brandon Khoo:
I have seen that miniscule little gap you refer to when spooling but I take pains to fill it by manually winding by hand to fill the gaps. It only a couple of winds to fill them.

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