Interesting Drag to Strike Drag #'s

[Courtland Babcock]

This time of year is tuna season in my area. The tuna are small #15-40 blackfin tuna so I try to fish as light as possible, usually PE3 as there are still big sharks, amberjack and other species available. I do bring a PE5-6 and a heavy PE8-10 setups to throw different lures. The bite was insane the other day with well over 100 bites for the 3 of us fishing and fish airing out all over most of the day.

I got sharked on my PE3 setup and he took my tuna and lure. I must have buttoned up the drag on my Saltiga 4500/Carpenter 83/16 during the fight. I immediately tied on another skipjack 60 and launched it. Only to get inhaled, strike it hard and come back with a break of my #60 flouro leader. It was broken right at the uni-uni knot with my #50 twisty. I don't tie bad knots, LOL. I am an absolute freak about terminal connections and test every single combination so I can set my drag accordingly and fight with confidence. As my buddy says, "Take all the evils out" before you cast.

This brings me to my driveway this morning. I took all 3 casting combo's and my calibrated drag scale. I tied the scale to my truck hitch and walked down the driveway to a distance of about 100' and with my line attached to the scale started "fishing". I would strike lightly and warm up the drag and keep increasing until I got to the point that "felt" about the same as when I am actually fishing. I have of course checked my drags regularly with smooth steady pulls and I know that I cannot fish much over #25 with a popping rod. I was surprised to find that my strike pressure was nearly 2X the actual smooth pull drag.

When I strike, the drag would pull. I of course assumed since the drag was set at #15-25 that it was releasing around there. I know there is static pressure and some tendency to stick until in motion, but not double.

Long story short. With my drag set at normal working conditions I got the following results:


Saltiga4500-drag set at #14- strike pressure was #24
Saltiga5000- drag set at #18- strike pressure was #36
Stella 18k- drag set at #25- strike pressure was #48

This may not be new news to some of you but to me it was. I am not sure if 2X is absolutely perfect but it seems to be close for me. 

 

[Joshua Fifis]

This is a great bit of info! Most of us know that the drag pressure will spike when setting hooks but it's good to see someone testing it out and giving some numbers.

[Felix Lux]

Thank you for those numbers, quite interesting. I didn't think it would make such a significant difference, at least not more than 50%!

[Mark Panhuyzen]

A few years back I started using fluro leader for Gts as they were getting really spooky where I live. I was using 130lb the biggest I could get.  After using it for a while and having random Knot failures on hook up I started doing some testing. After a prolonged fight or a brutal short boat dragging fight in a few metres of water we started testing the knots.  Basically hooking the lure on the gunnel of the boat and with gloves on testing the knot on the lure. It was OK under constant pressure but if you started bouncing on the knot it would break real easy. So now after every good fish I simply cut it of and retie it. Problem solved. That was using a uni knot.  I dont use it much anymore as I discovered stickbaits Nearly all our gts come on stickbaits you can throw a popper all day without so much as a sniff. So after every good fish now I test the knot on the lure. Sometimes you get a small nick in the leader and thinks its ok but on testing it pops easily under little pressure. We get a lot of monster longtoms where I live and they damage your leader all the time. You get good at tieing leaders on some days.  The older saltigas defineately have bad start up inertia even with carbontex washers and maintained regularly. The original carbon washers in them were pretty ordinary and really sticky. Ive gotton used to running a lighter drag on hookup and ramping it up. Most of the time I simply use my gloved hand for applying extra drag as I feel it gives more control and is safer especially when fishing solo.