Hi Adrian,
Any line will give you wind knots if your spool is overloaded. Investing in costly line like Varivas will not solve the problem. Your trip to Bali sounds pretty like what happened to me in Komodo about a decade ago... you can ask Jon Li how many times I got my butt kicked by the GTs. I also nearly got yanked over board in Ujung Kulon when I was fishing with Al Morrison's friend... its part and parcel of GT fishing buddy. Mind you, I was not using inferior gear back then... top notch spinners and premium Japanese popping sticks yet more fishes were lost than landed . Point is, you encounter problems/lose fish mainly due to lack of experience/know-how and NOT just because of inferior gear. So don't go on a buying spree after the first crushing defeat (like I did many years ago!)
Here's what I suspect went wrong-
1. "Guestimate" drag settings. Pros from Japan are using 7-12kg start up/initial drag and landing fish up to 70kgs... if your line is zipping off your reel at 12kgs setting I think there's either something wrong with your reel, the spring scale that you used to calibrate your drag setting is faulty... or you hooked Davy Jone's pet Krakan
I'm also guilty of using "guestimate" drag settings and have lost many fishes due to this. These days I use an accurate spring scale to measure my drag settings to ensure I'm putting enough pressure on the fish.
2. You got your spools machine loaded right to the brim with line and the wind knots started appearing after 2-3 casts. If you are going to machine load your spools, make sure your line is at least a good 5mm away from the spool lip. After your first cast, the top 70-100m of line will be very loosely packed and the line level is beyond your spool lip's diameter (over-filled). This is a sure fire recipe for wind knots.
I've dropped you a PM and left my tel. number. Let's meet up and chat over dinner sometime!
Mike
