TOPIC:

Yesterday I was fishing out of MC in my Kayak and hit what I thought was a king or a blue fin tuna in 60 FOW. The drag on my Okuma 15 DXT was not working well and the giant sheep head pulled my braided line deep into the spool and it is welded in there, I am going to have to cut the line out and respool. A little later I hit another sheep at the light house that snapped me off because my drag was locking up. So, is it just my cheap reels that is the problem or the 30 lb. braided line or both. I want to make sure I have a solid outfit for when I do hookup on a king I can land him with no problems. Should I be using Mono or Florocarbon? Is the Okuma to cheap to fish with out there? any advise or recommendations would be welcomed. Thank you!

I would say it's mostly the reel, not the line

Magdas are meh. The Okuma Convectors are great and not a huge step up in price


What lb test braid are you using? That could contribute as well. Most guys run real high test braid so it has higher diameter and is easier to work with.


Braid, mono, fluoro, all should work fine if the drag is of decent quality and set properly

Agree it sounds like a reel issue ... assuming you had the drag set properly and /or adjusted it in a proper manner.

Don't forget you need to have monofilament line on the reel about 20 yards then braid, otherwise the braid will dig in and interfere with the drag.

Bruce

Did u spool your line yourself? I run okuma.

Thundercat is correct. Make sure u have a decent amount of mono backing.

Make sure if your respool u make it nice and tight. I had similar problems the first time I spooled line on my trolling reels. When I respooled line nice and tight it solved my problem.

I’ve caught a lot of fish on Magda’s, not great reels, but they’ll get the job done especially for light use. I’m guessing the line was just not spoiled under enough tension and dug into itself and bound up.

I'm using 30 Lb spider wire.

I had to send one back because there was no drag at all. I felt that the drag on these reels were not not at all as smooth as what i was use to with my Abu Garcia reels. These were my first line counter reels.

I did not know about the mono backing, what lb test works best?

I didn't have any problems with inland rainbows or walleye that I caught with it it became an issue when I hooked a big sheephead.