Hi all. I'm having issues with a weak drag system on my Abu Garcia Promax reel and wondering if it can be fixed. Now a little backstory; yesterday I was out fishing and caught a bunch of dink smallmouths, I noticed my drag slipping just a bit even with it locked down tight. OK, no biggie I thought as I still landed the fish. Then I hooked into a pike and immediately he screams off 20 feet of line from the drag. I had to thumb the spool pretty hard to try and keep tension but alas he got off.

 

That got me wondering. I looked up the specs of the reel online and it advertises a max drag rating of 18lbs. Considering I was using 15lb fluoro at the time my line should have snapped before the drag went off. So today I took a scale and measured the drag strength... 3lb max! Weak! No wonder it was barely enough to stop a smallie. Is there anything I can do or am I stuck getting a better reel? PS I've only had this reel since June.

Assuming you had a full spool of fluoro, and no braid under the flouro (which will slip on the spool and give the impression the drag is weak), the only other probable cause is grease contamination of the drag washers. If you are good at taking stuff apart then you can do it yourself, Strip the reel down and take the drag stack apart. Clean off the drag washers with petrol or another solvent, then re-assemble. If you're not confident then send it in to be repaired.

Alright so I took Tim Kelly's advice and cleaned off the drag washer (there's really only one), sure enough there was grease on it, then I absolutely cranked the star drag to get it to be completely tight. What do you know, I doubled my max drag to 6 lb! Lol, still not nearly up to spec, but at least that hits the 1/3 of line strength threshold people say you need. So maybe now I won't look like an idiot and get spooled by a dinky bass... maybe.

If you disassembled the drag you should have seen 2 spring washers with a slight cup shape. Be sure they are oriented like this: () and if you're in the habit of storing it locked down consider replacing them. 

You should upgrade your drag washers see; Smoothdrag.com.

As DVT suggested...always back off your drag force after each outing, then reset it.

Tom