Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunter's Campfire Things Look Bad For The Dumpster

Here's a better photo of what the setup looks like offshore. In 2015, we were on a hot bite, and I had on rod in my hand when another one went off. I reached down to tighten the drag on that rod when the rod holder exploded. I watched helplessly as a nice Calstar with the Daiwa SLD 30 pitched overboard in 5000' of water. Unfortunately, Daiwa had discontinued those reels. I couldn't find one anywhere, so ended up replacing it and the other one with the Tiagras. That turned into a $1200 mistake. But now it's all gold reels across the back, which is good. I like symmetry.



I have resumed using the rod leashes to prevent a recurrence. The 50Ws have also been discontinued, so are irreplaceable. Really nice reels, they hold about 800 yards of 60# mono.

I've used 25# mono and caught fish on some old Squidders I cleaned up and replaced the drags with the HT100 carbon fiber drags. It's fun, but you need to be careful:



Oh, and about those gloves. If you don't wear them, after a few days of hard fishing your hands will be so cut up your fingers will swell so much you can't make a fist. If you catch lots of big fish, you'd already know that.