Breaking fish

Fishing Saltwater Fly Fishing
1

And intresting article I was made aware of from another site. I am sure you all have see this but here it is anyway.

http://castflys.net/fightfish.aspx

I would not have put it on as a link but it is not a www site and that might have been confusing.

Bob

2

Hey Bob?
That is just terrific - I will contact owner on that and see if we can get it on FAOL.
Thanks so much.
Hugs,
Deanna

3

Nice link indeed.

4

I decided to run an experiment to determine the effect of rod angle with line drag. I set up a Sage 890-4 rod with a 1880 reel and a WF 8 line so that I could measure the break away torque on the reel drag by hanging weights on the line (using a pulley). I could measure the force required just before the reel drag broke free from a static stopped position and started to rotate. I could do this with the rod perpendicular to the load and at 60, 30, and zero degrees from it. At the 90 degree set up I tightened the drag tight and loaded the rod until it had almost a 90 degree bend. I chose this because it was about all the load it would comfortably tolerate without candy caning it. I then loosened the drag so that it was just about to release and spool out line. This was the drag setting I used for all the other angles, adjusting the load until the drag was just about to release. The results looked like this:

Some conclusions:

  1. The 12 oz. drag setting on the reel increased to 19.8 oz. drag on the line at the 90 degree angle. This is the break away friction of the guides at that angle.
  2. A 12 oz. drag setting was about all this rod would comfortably tolerate without excessive bending risking breakage. It would not be wise to set the drag higher in that you are never sure exactly what the angle will be when a fish strikes.
  3. Line drag decreased as the rod was turned towards the loading direction. A higher drag could be tolerated when pointing the rod more towards the fish but it would be wise to palm the reel to get that extra drag because it is instantly and easily adjustable by changing palm pressure.
  4. 20 oz. of drag is a lot of load for any fish to drag around unless you are into tarpon. And it won’t be breaking any tippets.
  5. The Sage reel has an excellent drag, very easy to make fine adjustments. And the break away drag is very close to the running drag. Almost imperceptibly so. In engineering terms, the static coefficient of friction is very close to the dynamic coefficient. On many systems the static coefficient is noticeably higher.

In closing, it would probably be best to set the drag light and use both rod angle and palm drag to play your fish. It gives you two degrees of freedom of control in fighting a fish and gives the maximum degree of rod protection.

Just my $.02.

Godspeed and good fishing,

Bob

5

Bob -

An excellent presentation - thanks for posting the link.

John