knots and line tests

[Nude up]

I have two wilson popper rods and a shimano ocea t curve stick bait I will preset the drags to the same as the strike drag on the tiagra 50 around the 8kg mark. We never touch the drag when fighting the marlin only backing it off when it comes boatside

[frozenpod]

The shimano is 2.4m long so it will probably be ok.

I change the drag all the time when on a fish as the spool diameter changes so does the drag.

With the tiagra 50 when the spool is empty the drag is 3 times preset drag of a full spool.

[Nude up]

We have never had an issue with line breaking due to to much drag we try to keep as much line as possible on the reel using the boat, the only time we have lost a fish is when it jumps it has landed on the leader and we have had the leader part company due to being bill wrapped and its done the old washing machine head shakes

[Nude up]

My mate has bought an okuma salina and a daiwa saltist 6500h maybe we rig his up with bimini double and wind on and mine fg knot leader and see which holds I will talk with him

[frozenpod]

My mate has bought an okuma salina and a daiwa saltist 6500h maybe we rig his up with bimini double and wind on and mine fg knot leader and see which holds I will talk with him

Double in braid?

[frozenpod]

We have never had an issue with line breaking due to to much drag we try to keep as much line as possible on the reel using the boat, the only time we have lost a fish is when it jumps it has landed on the leader and we have had the leader part company due to being bill wrapped and its done the old washing machine head shakes

If you get onto a big blue you will loose a lot of line.

We had one pull 600-700m of line off in the first run (strike drag 13kg) which went for what seemed like less than one minute.

Sadly the fish through the hooks shortly after.

[Nude up]

One of our mutual friends uses a saltiga with 80lb braid a bimini tied double then a wind on leader he has caught quite a few marlin on it and not had any issues

[Nude up]

Three years ago I caught a 215kg blue (its on my wall) on 25kg tiagra 50w never touched the drag took 2 hours to bring in.

[frozenpod]

Thats a great fish and a great pic, I have seen you post it before and more than happy to see it again.

I don't know how big the one we hooked onto was but it pulled a lot harder than any other fish we have hooked onto. The reel had 1100m of line and the spool was about 50% down.

After that fish I decided to re evaluate the gear we were using, better harness new rods so you could apply more drag pressure and use the full potential of 37kg gear.

[frozenpod]

One of our mutual friends uses a saltiga with 80lb braid a bimini tied double then a wind on leader he has caught quite a few marlin on it and not had any issues

I haven't used a double with braid but as it is a friction based knot with slippery braid I would think it might not be all that strong. (I have done testing with fairly slippery braid and the results were poor maybe other braid would work better)

Paulus told me the plat is a better option with braid but again I haven't really used either with braid so I don't know.