What kind of idiot adjusts the drag on a big fish with a crankbait!?!? ?? let this be a lesson not to touch the drag when fighting fish with crankbaits.

 

 

Speaking of, I’ve never thought about it, but how do you know your drag is set right? I just do it by feel, but there’s no real rhyme or reason. On the fight in the video, the fish starting taking drag (which actually was a good thing). Obviously my brain stopped working and I forgot the purpose of the drag was to soften the tension on the fish while keeping it tight. (In my defense, my drag sometimes gets knocked around on my little boat and I have made a terrible habit of adjust it after I have realized it changed). I was using a Dobyns Champion 735CB (graphite) with 10-lb Invizx, which probably gave my naïveté with the drag enough forgiveness to put any big fish in the boat at all (I caught several 4-5 lbers that day). I guess now I know boating the bigger fish requires more than a fancy combo setup, and requires a little user know-how.

 

At what point do you want the drag to start slipping with crankbaits? I know a lot of guys say ‘25% of line break strength’. Does that apply for trebles?

You can set the drag with a hand held scale or by feel pulling line off the spool. I like to set the drag for treble hooked baits by jerking the rod violently with the bait in the water submerged. When the drag barely slips while pulling hard it is good to go. Think of the drag just barely slipping on a hard hookset.  

I always have my drag set fairly firm with just the slightest amount of give if I am to hook into a giant. For cranks I believe having a moderate action to your rod is more important in softening that tension. I haven’t really put much thought into drag settings but in my opinion, better too tight than too loose. 

 

Funny story: over the winter months I store my reels with the drag all the way loose. My first outing of the season I went to set the hook, swung pretty hard and my drag was so loose it caused my reel to backlash. That fish didn’t make it to the boat. ?

I sometimes adjust the drag while fighting a fish . 

25 minutes ago, Graham said:

Funny story: over the winter months I store my reels with the drag all the way loose. My first outing of the season I went to set the hook, swung pretty hard and my drag was so loose it caused my reel to backlash. That fish didn’t make it to the boat. ?

Did the exact same thing earlier this year, which is probably one of the reasons why I reached for the drag on this fish.

1 minute ago, Dirtyeggroll said:

Did the exact same thing earlier this year, which is probably one of the reasons why I reached for the drag on this fish.

I wouldn’t say you are an idiot for reacting the way you did. Didn’t seem like you made that drastic of an adjustment in the vid, that fish could have hopped off for any number of reasons.

Well educated thumb! ?

53 minutes ago, Graham said:

I wouldn’t say you are an idiot for reacting the way you did. Didn’t seem like you made that drastic of an adjustment in the vid, that fish could have hopped off for any number of reasons.

Oh I know. The drag just barely slipped on that fish, just like it was supposed to. The adjustment I made completely stopped it from slipping. The rod was completely loaded up and I kept horsing. I just have a bad tendency to try to horse fish no matter what’s tied on. In other words, I’ve never really used the drag to aid in the fight. I lost a lot of fish that day. I think if I would learn to use the drag appropriately, I would probably have more success getting big fish in the boat.

 

Of course, the lists of imaginative ‘could haves’ and ‘should haves’ for the one(s) that got away are endless.

Channel locks  

3 minutes ago, Catt said:

Well educated thumb! ?

 

At least you’ve been having enough action to have “ones that got away” ?! I have been having a rough couple days. I also broke off a 20$ glide bait last night which was frustrating...