Having been utterly fisted by kings rubbing me off on old braid on a recent trip west, I decided to respool the my Saragosa 20,000 with 100lb tasline, hoping to give myself a little bit of time to open the bail arm if I realise a king has gone under the boulder.
I'm already using Tasline on the rest of my reels, 12lb on my 5000, 40 on my bio 10k and 60lb on my 5500h expo. I was using a spool of WFT which we got super cheap a while back on the 20k, but it doesnt' have the abrasion resistance or longevity that i've enjoyed on my other reels. For example, the 60lb on my expo actually came off this reel, which I bought from Cam, who had it spooled almost 3 years ago now. It landed me a wonderful hammerhead about 2 years ago which I detailed in another report, and when I turned it around to put in on my expo it's like new.
So with my Gosa lineless I was using an old spinfisher with 51kg WFT on it, which seems to break the moment anything other than air or water touches it.
Not fancying blowing my shoulders out spooling a 20k reel before we went fishing, we dropped into Busted for a chat with Frank and a look at the new spooling machine, which he is designing and building himself. As with all of the gear he makes, his new spooler is absolutely top of the line.
Setting the spool into the machine
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ik_DSaw1I3A
Setting the drag to the level I want it spooled at
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BCIldIg9JJc
Adding a line counter, so I can buy the exact amount of line I need, charged by the metre, instead of having spools of 60m of braid leftover that i've paid for and are useless
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3QMpOMMYHS8
On it goes!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K8_cndJDbx0
The result
A perfectly spooled, perfectly tensioned spool of the best line on the market, paid to the metre and not a cent more.
Cam did his little 1000 strad spool with 12lb while we were at it.
If you're not as interested in the spooler as we were, and dont' get distracted by the pretty lures or other specialised gear he has in stock, you can admire his glory wall while you wait.
I make no secret that Frank and I have known each other for a little while now. I met him on a rock ledge and recognised him from a LBG talk waaaayyyy back when I first started fishing. He showed me some of the ropes and over the course of 5ish years now we've traded quite a few war stories. None of this detracts from the fact that the gear he makes, and in particular the tasline, is absolute top quality and the customer service is second to none.
Cam and I ended up drifting livies at Sorrento to test out some new rigs and slinging some massive kingfish poppers just cos we like casting them, getting some very, very strange looks from the locals, and landing about 7 squid but nothing else interesting.
