alantani

"stoplight" rigging penn makes a beautiful reel calls a fathom 60 two speed lever drag. joey went through it, did a full service and then i installed a 5/0 grip and spooled it up. the customer wanted 450 yards of 100 pound JB hollow and an 80 pound mono topshot that was spliced in. not a problem. remember this old photo? we have a winding station! i still have the same set up, but i added a little more inventory. been dialing things in for the last 6 months, and i think i'm pretty well set. for this particular reel, i put a double layer of flex wrap around the arbor and smeared a light coat of yamaha grease on the sides of the spool. then i took some red 100# JB hollow, mounted it to the line tensioner and set the tension to a smooth 15 pounds. then i spooled up 100 yards. next, i spliced in some 100# JB hollow in yellow, and spooled up another 100 yards. now 100 yards of 100# green JB hollow. 150 yards of 100# white JB hollow for a total of 450 yards. and finally 50 yards of 80# berkely big game. nice looking serve, huh!!! i set the drag to 20 pounds at strike and now we're all set! for lack of a better name, i'm going to call this "stoplight" rigging. it's pretty simple. it's a double layer of flex wrap with some yamaha grease on the sides of the spool. the spectra is loaded under 50 to 75% of your anticipated drag setting. any mono or fluoro is then loaded under 25% of the anticipated drag setting. the idea here is that a guy can hit the green and know that he has 300 yards left. when he hits the yellow, he has 200 yards left and needs to start paying attention. if he hits the red, he's got 100 yards and is going to have to make some quick decisions. i know guys have marked their lines before, but in the heat of the battle, i think these marks can be easy to miss. this type of rigging is as obvious as it gets. unless it's pitch dark, you can't miss green, yellow and red, and you can't NOT know what it means. it's VERY time consuming to do this. the yellow and red are a little sticky and can be tedious to splice. i use a 6 foot section of 27 pound stainless steel single strand leader material that is folded in half to do all my splices. i've chosen this because this is what the average guy will use. most guys will not be able to afford a $100 needle kit. as far as the serve goes, i have all the fancy stuff. for most connections, i just use a modified tony pena with a four turn uni on the mono side and then 6 turns up and 10 turns down on the spectra side. it cinches up beautifully! i would love to see this become the new standard! alan

same run out of half moon bay as the last two trips. had two new guys, eric and brian. hit the same areas off of san gregorio and pescadero. had the same results. i'm not sure how you can not get bit. lots of schoolie rockfish. two nice lings for the captain! one each for the crew. a nice cabbie! there were a dozen or so boats that launched that morning. they all headed north for salmon. the two guys i spoke to had one salmon each. there were three of us that headed south for rockfish. i would imagine that they came back with the same full ice chests that we did. we came back with 4 lings. should have had 10. it's tough with a new crew. they had mono on their reels, not spectra, fishing lots of different jigs. frozen squid is hard to find, but i lucked out and found five of the 5 pound boxes at a local grocery store and bought everything, so i've got squid for 4 more trips. the next trip is memorial day with my brother. see you on the water!

some guys are just unstoppable...... ;D this boat is now 10 years old. it didn't get much use when my father-in-law was sick, but i retire in a month and i certainly intend to get some use out of it this summer. other than a few temperamental rocker switches, it runs perfectly. even the 10 year old electronics package is more than advanced enough to get the job done. kudos to the guys and central valley marine and johnson-hicks that put everything together. tuesday was just another magical day in paradise! well, we actually could have used a little more wind. it was so dead out there that there was really no drift to speak of. roger shu was back on board, along with his co-worker, harry franklin. also joining us were ben tsutaoka and ted yamagishi. it was harry that would steal the day! harry was just on fire! the first two drops, the first two fish. after a few schoolie browns, blacks and blues, this 18 pound slug came over the rail. then his second 18 pounder a half hour later. ted caught most of our cabezon and i got a nice pair of vermillion, weighing in at 6 and 7 pounds. we ended up with day with an ice chest full of fish! there were six ling cod, four cabs, two vermillions, 15 blacks and a mix of 15 total for the browns, grass cod and blues. we now have an official ling cod king! oh, and the vermillions got an invitation to dinner!

been awhile since i've done any serious photo shoots, but life is finally turning around to the point where i actually have some free time. i thought that i would start with a quick review of a reel that ben tsutaoka just purchased. you saw ben on our puerto vallarta trip last month. he found a pretty good sale on a gorgeous penn 30 vsx in silver and decided to spend a little christmas money. now, joey did the full tear down on this reel and i just kibitzed. here's the reel. nice, huh! nice on the outside and equally well designed on the inside. we installed a signature "AT" handle grip, it spins like crazy, and the silver color looks really gorgeous! it was spooled up with 350 yards of 100 pound jerry brown hollow, then another 150 yards of 130 pound JBH, and then finally a mono topshot. the drag was set to 35 pounds at strike. just out of curiosity, i decided to check the drag settings at the various different numbers that penn engraved above the quadrant. curiously, i got 20 pound of drag at the number 1 setting, 25 pounds of drag at the number 2 setting and 30 pounds of drag at the number 3 setting. ok, that's pretty convenient. now back up to 35 pounds of drag at strike, then 40 pounds when you push the lever until lines up just over the locator pin, and finally 45 pounds at full. now, i would imagine that someone did this on purpose, but there is nothing in the manual that describes this. you'd think that somebody at penn might say something if they went to all the trouble to design it this way. well, maybe they won't say anything, but i certainly will...... to the folks at penn, well done!!!!!

joey's been spending more time here in the garage because the dummies at the fisherman's warehouse laid him off. that's better for him anyway. he gets fed here, he's allowed to drink on the job (a little) and i pay him twice as much as the warehouse. one of his first projects was to put together the new winding station. i ordered up a second work station from benchpro, joey put it together and loaded it up with stuff. for monofilament, there is a minimum of one partial and one full spool of every line weight of berkeley big game from 15 pounds to 80. for spectra, i have jerry brown hollow core in 60, 80, 100, 130 and 200, mostly white, but some green, yellow, red and 10 yard metered. there is also some of alan chui's hollow thunder in 80 camo and 130 pound white. i have jerry brown solid in 50 and 65 and a bunch of odd and ends. you've seen the winder before. it allows me to wind a penn international 50 in high gear with 20 pounds of tension because of the massive electric motor that jim nomura installed. the spool tensioner was torn apart and rebuilt with carbon fiber drag washers. i mostly use a tony pena knot, but can still do wind ons! and lastly, the working surface is high enough that my beer frig will fit underneath. priorities, priorities......

and ben got the last fish of the day. https://youtu.be/48FqsoC6z8I https://youtu.be/GGMgxleDGpY https://youtu.be/m5hhuNbhh9s he had a little trouble hanging on for the photo because it was still trying to swim! sunday - 12/13/2015 - back to port at la cruz de huanacaxtle at 6am. danny took the fish to a local processor to get the latest catch fully frozen, then came back and took us out to breakfast. there was a local street fair that is set up every sunday, lots of tourists and lots of stuff made in china. https://youtu.be/l-C0aBDO1PQ we took a cab ride back to the airport, checked the ice chests and soft sided coolers, had lunch and boarded the plane for the flight home. customs at the US end was more of a hassle than mexico. i breezed through, but the guy that checked ben decided that he did not look like the photo in his passport. we eventually got through, got everyone home, got fish to a few people, showered and crashed. pretty incredible trip! from left to right, it's mike, ben, dave and me. many thanks to scott, danny and roberto osuna. had a great time, definitely going back next year, maybe even sooner!

saturday - 12/12/2015 - pretty much the same as yesterday, but we had some weather. a monsoon came through, must have dumped 4 inches of rain in 20 minutes. we had four more nice yellowfin, gave them all to the pangas, and in the late afternoon started heading home. mike was first for the day! dave was up next! i was third.

friday - 12/11/2015 - still fishing the north island. it's pretty clear that they are hitting the balloon rig and not the fly lined baits. got my first amberjack, just goofing off with live bait, hooked onto a jig, down at 200 feet. it was great fun! i think this is the day that we would get five tuna, four came in at 200 pounds or better. dave got a slug. over 200 pounds. here is ben's fish. dave has a video of me railing the big fish in 20 minutes. the last one was a 120 pound dink and we gave to one of the pangas, but the big ones, wow, what an experience! roberto made chorizo and eggs for breakfast, then for lunch these great fish tacos from that dorado that mike caught the day before. dinner was grilled grouper with rice and steamed vegetables. i think roberto had planned for a bunch of korean guys for this trip, so we had lots of rice!

after a couple of hours, we had one fish that grabbed my bait and mike's, but mike basically brought that one in. late in the day, i got my first balloon fish. it was a dinky little 80 pounder. got him to the gaff in 5 minutes. i felt kinda bad. the poor little guy never had a chance. all of these fish were bled out, then quartered, bagged, vacuum sealed and tossed into the freezer. today's take would be four tuna, 80 to 150 pounds, and one dorado to 20 pounds. the last fish of the day was a beautiful dorado. it's amazing to see the same fish change colors. he went from blue to green to silver over a minutes time. for dinner, roberto made some sushi with a nice chunk of yellowfin for a late afternoon snack. for dinner, he pulled out the grill and made burgers for everyone, but i had filled up on sushi and rum, passed out on the couch and missed dinner. we spend the night on a sea anchor but still got bounced around. i think maybe i got three hours of sleep.

thursday - 12/10/2015 - roberto had breakfast going, and the coffee was actually pretty good. scotty had two marauders out and close to the northernmost island, we had a hit. this would be the first of three personal bests for mr. david hall. he harnessed up but had no idea how to fight this thing. at the end of the fight, his legs gave out, he fell and couldn't get up, and spend the rest of the day trying to recuperate. i'd never seen a guy's facial color go from normal, to beet red, to dusky during a fight like that. once we got to the island, we set up a drift, ran the helium balloon rigs and started fly lining some baits. if you fish with danny sometime in the future and want to bring some balloons, this is the size you need. mike caught a nice one on the balloon. this is how you want them hooked! ben got a nice one on the balloon as well.

fishing with danny osuna, puerto vallarta - 12/9-13/2015 a big thanks to ben. most of the photos are his. i screwed up with my camera. most of you have seen my co-worker, ben, in some of my reports - perhaps local fishing with him and his kids, or on our spirit of adventure trip this last summer. he's got the fishing bug pretty bad. so he's cruising around bdoutdoors.com last month and comes across a post from kil song. kil is that east coast jigging guy and he posted up about an available trip with danny osuna out of puerto vallarta that just freed up. apparently these four guys from korea totally bagged on danny and left him with nothing but a deposit. ben checked our schedules at work and saw that both he and i had that entire stretch of time of, except for a night shift for him and a night shift for me. i'm thinking that there is no way we could put this together in three weeks, but why not try? so ben sets off with the task of getting our shifts covered. night shifts here at the poison control hotline are tough to trade away, but he pulled it off!!!!! then i started posting around to see if we could get two more guys. well, dave from san jose popped up and said yes, and then so did mike from arizona. we had no idea who mike was, but he fishes so he's gotta be alright! so we have four guys, i confirmed with danny, send down a deposit, got the plane tickets, packed up a 100 quart ice chest as my "checked luggage," filled it with a soft sided 50 quart cooler, 600 half gallon vacuum bags, some leader material that danny needed, throw away clothes, a throw away shaving kit, and no fishing tackle at all. wednesday - 12/9/2015 - had yesterday off and finished all the bills, all the paperwork and most of the emails. got maybe 3 hours of sleep. dave and his son pick me up at 6am and we head up to san mateo to pick up ben. we load up his gear and go straight to san francisco international airport and check in at the alaska airlines international terminal. after a quick breakfast, and a few more hours of sitting, we board the plane for a 3 hour flight to puerto vallarta. going through customs at PV was quick and easy. just flash a quick smile at the customs lady, she smiles back, tell her that you are going fishing, she pushes the "green go" button and you are through! ben and dave got held up a little for some reason, but we all get through. exiting the building, arizona mike and danny osuna are already waiting for us at the "oxxo" store across the street and just outside the exit. now 5pm local time, danny loaded us up in his truck and took us to the boat. part of the deal was that we wanted to vacuum back our fish. that's why i brought 600 pre-cut vacuum pack bags. he said his vacuum packer took a dump on him, so he would spend the next 4 hours trying to find one. he dropped us off at his boat and he went out to find a vacuum packer. we headed up to the top of the dock to a cantina and restaurant called oso (the bear) for dinner, beer and tequila. finally at 9pm, danny returns with a vacuum packer. what you see in the background of this photo is not a picture, it's the actual harbor. this is gonna be tough to beat. danny had some live baits delivered. these are the ultra tough cabellito. you can hook these up with a giant circle hook straight through the back, let them swim for an hour, drag them back, throw them back into bait tank, rehook them the next day and they are fine. they also cost danny $1 each. he's loading us up with 200! being only mildly drunk, i thought i was going to sleep well, but that would not be the case. the boat is a 37 foot blackfin. i took a look around at the cabin situation and told arizona mike to take the main cabin on the bow. it had a double bed in it and looked great. there was also a small cabin mid beam and to port with two small bunks, so that's where ben and dave went. i decided to "rough it" and took the couch in the galley. once underway, it was 10 hours of northwest pounding, straight into the wind and waves. poor mike didn't get a minute of sleep. i got maybe a few hours because i had the best bunk in the house!

steve from australia - 8/25/2015 a guy from the website send a pm a couple of months ago. he said he would be in san francisco for a couple of days and was asking for a recommendation for a good charter boat. "well, come fishing with me!" so yesterday morning, my neighbor, jeff, and i drove north with the boat, and my friend mel picked up our australian guest in san francisco and we met in half moon bay. meet steve forbes from canberra! steve's driver, mel, had a slow start but started catching big fish when we hit the "big fish" locations. in addition to some ling cod, he stuck a 6 pound vermillion, and one vermillion that bottomed out my 8 pound scale. and jeff ended up with a bunch of nice fish, including this vermillion and the biggest ling cod of the day. had a pretty good take today!

well done!

greases and oils - an update (9/14/2010) grease is easy. shimano drag grease still works very well at $50 per pound. cal's drag grease is every bit as good, probably even better, and is half the price at $25 per pound. for general purpose grease, i still prefer the $5 a pound yamaha marine all purpose grease. the omc stuff is too tacky for my liking. penn makes a great product, daiwa's blue grease works great, they all work great. for coating the inside of a reel, i use a ratty old tooth brush that is mostly yamaha marine grease, but it has residue of maybe 20 other greases mixed in. it's no big deal. you just need a light coat of something, anything, to prevent corrosion on the inside of a reel. for a general purpose oil, i use corrosion x. i have no idea what's in it. the company won't tell, but it's cheap enough and has worked well enough over the last 10 years that i feel very comfortable recommending it even though i don't know what it's made out of. you're looking at $17 for a big pump bottle or spray can that will last me a couple of months, but will last the average fisherman a lifetime. compared to some other lubes, corrosion x has the viscosity of pancake syrup, but i think that it is the single best all purpose product out there. and it's cheap! then there are the performance lubes that cost $5-10 for a single one ounce bottle. ok, if it's going to cost as much as a single malt scotch, i want to know what's in it before i recommend it. products like quantum's hot sauce, metaloil, reel-x, and all the house brands from penn, daiwa, and shimano, all fall into this category. these products are all much faster than corrosion x, they are much more expensive than corrosion x, and the formulations are all secret. it's fine to have secrets, but until these products are all objectively (there's that word again) evaluated, it would be tough for anyone to make an objective recommendation. now for xtreme reel +. i used it for over a year and stopped. it is, without a doubt, the fastest stuff out there. it is a teflon polymer lubricant suspended in a freon carrier. the freon evaporates in microseconds and leaves a thin dry film of teflon. the freespool from a reel properly cleaned and then lubed with xtreme reel + is mind blowing! but it only lasts a few weeks. after that point, the freespool is the same as corrosion x, meaning mediocre. still, if you are a tournament guy or a long ranger and you service your reels before every trip, try xtreme reel + and prepare to be amazed. it will absolutely, positively, deliver the fastest longest freespool of any product on the market today. and finally, there is tsi 301. jim nomura has been working with me for the last half a year. he is an engineer and brought a level of engineering expertise that was sorely missing in this little hobby endeavor of mine. one thing he brought in was tsi 301. i'm guessing that the freespool from reel treated with tsi 301 is perhaps 80% that of a reel treated with xtreme reel +. the big advantage of tsi 301 is that it lasts much longer. i believe that we are looking at 6 to 12 months of great freespool for tsi 301 versus 1-2 weeks for xtreme reel +. this puts the performance on a par with the other superlubes mentioned above, but at a half to a quarter of the price of the superlubes. i've been using it for the last 6 months now (as of 9/2010) and have been very, very, impressed. the downside? it's $20 plus shipping, it is only available on line, and shipping is slow as molassas. so right now it's yamaha marine all purpose blue grease for all the non-exposed metal surfaces, cal's drag grease for carbon fiber drag washer, corrosion x for a general purpose low speed oil (bearings, levelwinds, handles), and tsi 301 for high speed bearings and levelwinds. for your application, you could grab any of the superlubes online or at any shop and do just fine!

bearing list - updated 9/14/2019 this is a list of all the bearings i have ever come across while working on reels. it you service reels in a shop or as a hobby, print out this list and consider maintaining a minimum inventory of each of these sizes. if you are working on a reel and you need a bearing, you an always go to penn, shimano, daiwa, okuma, etc., for a bearing specific to that reel. you can also go to anyone of several places like boca or smooth drag and order them up. just as a point of reference, i've listed metric and inch bearings by ID x OD x TH, then the boca bearings part #, then the ABEC rating, and then the boca bearings price. if there is no abec number listed, then assume that it is ABEC-1. all of the bearings are stainless steel. the "ZZ" indicates that the bearing has stainless steel shields. ceramic bearings - you all probably know that i am not a big fan of ceramic bearings. before you toss your stainless steel abec-5's, i would recommend cleaning your stainless bearings with carb cleaner and compressed air, then lube them with your performance grade lube of choice, and them see how they perform. if the performance is not up to snuff, consider another bearing. once you get your stainless steel abec-5's clean out and properly lubed, i think you will find them to be just as fast, and much quieter. abec 7 bearings - sometimes you can have too much of a good thing, and tighter tolerances are not always good. i consider that to be the case with abec-7 bearings. i prefer the looser tolerances and lower prices of stainless steel abec-5 bearings. avet bearings - special mention should be made here. avet buys a very inexpensive bearing for their reels and passes on that savings to their customers. bearings are generally $5 each. that is good and, um, bad. if you burn through bearings quickly, stick with avet bearings and save some money. if you keep your reels well maintained, consider upgrading your bearings with something a little higher in quality. the last time i ordered a dozen bearings from avet. every one of them had some damage to then. i still have that bag for display purposes. here's the list. metric 3 x 8 x 4 SMR693-ZZ #5 $9 3 x 10 x 4 SMR103-ZZ #5 $8 4 x 7 x 2.5 SMR74-ZZ #5 $9 4 x 8 x 3 SMR84-ZZ #5 $12 4 x 10 x 4 SMR104-ZZ #5 $8 4 x 11 x 4 SMR694-ZZ #5 $12 5 x 8 x 2.5 SMR85-ZZ #7 $8 5 x 9 x 3 SMR95-ZZ #5 $9 5 x 10 x 4 SMR105-ZZ #5 $9 5 x 11 x 3 SMR685 #1 OPEN $7 5 x 11 x 4 SMR115-ZZ #5 $9 5 x 11 x 5 SMR685-ZZ #5 $8 6 x 10 x 3 SMR106-ZZ $7 6 x 12 x 4 SMR126-ZZ #5 $9 6 x 13 x 3.5 SMR686 #5 $9 6 x 13 x 5 SMR686-ZZ #5 $12 6 x 15 x 5 SMR696-ZZ #1 $9 6 x 17 x 6 SMR606-ZZ #1 $11 6 x 19 x 6 SMR626-ZZ $12 avet 7 x 13 x 4 SMR137-ZZ #5 $9 7 x 14 x 3.5 SMR147 #1 $12 7 x 14 x 5 SMR697-ZZ #5 $12 7 x 17 x 5 SMR697-ZZ #5 $12 7 x 19 x 6 SMR607-ZZ #3 $14 7 x 22 x 7 SMR627-ZZ #1 $12 8 x 12 x 2.5 SMR128(X) $9 8 x 12 x 3.5 SMR128-ZZ #5 $9 8 x 13 x 4 SMR138-ZZ #5 $12 8 x 14 x 3.5 SMR148 $9 8 x 14 x 4 SMR148-ZZ #5 $9 8 x 16 x 5 SMR688-ZZ #5 $9 avet 8 x 19 x 6 SMR698-ZZ #1 $11 8 x 22 x 7 SMR608-ZZ #5 $22 9 x 17 x 4 SMR689 #1 $12 9 x 17 x 5 SMR689-ZZ #5 $12 9 x 20 x 6 SMR699-ZZ #3 $13 10 x 15 x 3 No Boca Number $14 10 x 15 x 4 SMR6700-ZZ #3 $14 10 x 19 x 5 SMR6800-ZZ $16 10 x 20 x 5 SMR2010-ZZ $18 10 x 22 x 6 SMR6900-ZZ #1 $17 10 x 26 x 8 SMR6000-ZZ #1 $20 12 x 18 x 4 SMR6701C-YZZ AF2 $10 12 x 21 x 5 SMR6801-ZZ #3 $22 avet 12 x 22 x 5 Daiwa #B18-1601 $15 inch 0.125 x 0.250 x 0.1094 SR144ZZ #7 $8 0.125 x 0.375 x 0.156 SR2-ZZ #3 $7 0.125 x 0.500 x 0.172 SR2A-ZZ #1 $7 0.1875 x 0.3125 x 0.125 SR156-ZZ #7 $8 avet 0.1875 x 0.375 x 0.125 SR166-ZZ #7 $8 0.1875 x 0.500 x 0.196 SR3-ZZ #3 $7.25 0.1875 x 0.6875 x 0.250 SR1601-2RS LGF $10 0.250 x 0.625 x 0.196 SR4-ZZ #3 $8 0.312 x 0.500 x 0.1562 SR1810-ZZ #3 $9 avet 0.375 x 0.625 x 0.1562 SR1038-ZZ #3 $11 avet 0.375 x 0.875 x 0.2188 SR6 #3 $12 0.375 x 0.875 x 0.2188 SR6-ZZ $7 Avet 0.500 x 0.875 x 0.2812 No Boca Number $17 0.500 x 0.875 x 0.3125 SR6-5ZZ#3 $17 0.500 x 1.125 x 0.3125 SR8-ZZ #1 $20

accusleeves - 9/1/2010 a question was asked on bloody decks about sleeving the bearings of accurate reels. http://www.bloodydecks.com/forums/accurate-fishing-adventures/265718-freespool-sleeve.html it's really pretty simple. here's the post that describes the general process. http://alantani.com/index.php?topic=138.0 i've actually sleeved all of my own personal accurates. the freespool really is very nice. perhaps one of the best things about accurate reels is that the tolerances are so tight. you could measure out a sleeve for any single reel, knock out another hundred sleeves, and pretty much be right on the money for all of the rest. that's how well made the accurate reel is. so my friend jim cut a few sleeves for me. he set them up so that they are 3-4 thousanths too long. remember that a piece of paper is 3 thousanths of an inch thick. a black and gray single speed boss 270 was send in with really bad freespool. i pulled the spool and gave it a spin with no load on the bearings. i got 15 seconds of freespool. then i pushed in on the spring and put a load on the bearings and got 6 seconds of freespool.

today i answered two of the oldest questions ....... ..... that have troubled fishermen since the dawn of time. or at least since the dawn of modern appliances. first, can you clean your reels in the dishwasher? and second, if you get caught, what will your wife do? well, i had a few hours at home before work this morning. i was looking at a box of reels that i got in the mail and figured that these really needed a good cleaning. with half a load of morning breakfast dishes and my wife out for a few hours, i seized the opportunity. the dishwasher ran through the wash and rinse cycle, and started to dry. then, i heard the three words that a misbehaving husband fears the most. "honey, i'm home!!!" the first questions she asks is why the dishwasher is going. how do they know? fortunately, she has a sense of humor. and lousy aim! unfortunately, one dishwasher cycle did nothing to remove the corrosion on these old penns. i was lucky this time. kids, don't try this at home.........

lay the spring flat. now here's the tricky part. there is a little bit of a gap underneath the pawl that allows your new dog spring to get stuck. to avoid this, i added a shimano washer that i pulled out of my junk box and used this washer to shim the pawl. now the spring will not get stuck. ok, now this washer is critical. without it, the pawl spring gets caught underneath the pawl and the pawl gets jammed in the "up and away" position. that means it won't work at all. i THINK that this washer is from the shimano tld 15. it should be spacer A, part #TLD 0047. i have to check the next TLD that comes in to make sure. i did not think to use the trinidad dc pawl that i already had. i will have to try that on the next reel. install the pawl. install the anti-reverse pawl keeper. install the anti-reverse ratchet and your new spring loaded dog system is complete! so there you have it, your clicking torium. the trinidad DC pawl and pawl spring is a drop in fix for the regular Trinidads and Toriums. part #s 1304 spring, and 1303 pawl. no washer is required.

well, with this inspiration (and a dog send to me by a guy on bloodydecks!), i finally decided to try in on a torium. here is the trinidad dc pawl spring. here is the ambassaduer-style pawl that comes stock with the torium (and the standard trinidads). you can see already how the pawl is damaged. the anti-reverse roller bearing in this reel is totally shot, so the pawl is doing all of the work. the ambassaduer-style spring actually peels off fairly easily. then you can use a standard mill bastard file to clean up all of the burrs.

does anyone need 100 trinidad dog springs? so here's the deal. the "drop in" dog and spring from the $800 trinidad DC gives the anti-reverse system of the plain trinidad and torium near 100% reliability. if you can get a DC dog, then there are no modifications needed. if you have to use the original ambassaduer style dog, then you need a small washer to shim the dog an keep the spring from getting caught. the problem is that shimano is out of dog springs!!!!!!!!!!! they are back ordered until june. so here's the deal. a local shop can make a stainless steel spring for me. there will be 6 hours of set up time at $100 per hour, then they can crank out 300 springs an hour at $100 per hour. follow me on the math. 300 springs will cost $700. 600 springs will cost $800. 900 springs will cost $900. 1200 springs will cost $1,000. so does anyone out there need 100 springs? if there are 8 more guys, i can order 900 springs at a buck each. believe me, there are easily 900 trinidads and toriums out there that could benefit from this upgrade. e-mail me at alantani@yahoo.com if interested. thanks! alan

magnificent work!

if it is once every rotation of the handle, and at exactly the same spot, then you have a piece of something caught in the teeth of the main gear, or a tooth of the main gear is damaged. hope for the former. alan

beautiful work! one thing that i've found helpful is to add the key #'s from the schematics and also let people know what the dimensions on the bearings are. drag washer dimensions are sometimes helpful as well.

The most important thing you can do to maintain your reel is to service it when it is brand new. The mantra is greased carbon fiber drag washers, spool bearings that are open and lightly lubed, level wind assemblies that are lightly lubed, non-spool bearings that are packed with grease, grease on all the screws and a light coat of grease on all the non-exposed surfaces. Do a thorough job the first time and your reel should last for years. Done properly, the only things in your reel that should remain at risk are the spool bearings. If you pack the spool bearings with grease, they will never rust, but you won’t be able to cast either. If you lube them and leave them, they will eventually rust. The best maintenance schedule, then, is to thoroughly service your reel first. After every fishing trip, rinse your reel with fresh water and dry it with a towel or compressed air. Finally, lube the bearings and the level wind assembly with a light oil. Stick with this schedule and your reel should last for years.

3/27/09 - There are several different drag systems that are commonly used in reels today. Their smoothness, this lack of “start up,” can sometimes be the difference between landing a fish or not. I service an average of about a thousand reels a year and I think I’ve pretty much seen every drag material that’s ever been used. Remember, I would define a “smooth drag” as having less than 10% “start up.” If you have a weight that is equivalent to your drag setting and hang that weight on the reel, a smooth drag would allow that weight to drop 1 foot every 5 seconds. A “reliable drag” would then be a smooth drag that would never become sticky as the reel ages. Simple enough, so let’s see what’s out there. Leather was used as a drag material in the early Mitchells from France, the early Ocean City’s, the early Penn’s and many others. It did not perform well. Over the years, many different materials were developed, including felt, particle board, hard carbon and some unique composites. They all became sticky over time. Coarse woven carbon fiber, their famous HT-100, eventually became the drag material of choice for Penn, but this material would stick if it became wet, corroded or oily. Shimano took it one step further by adding pure teflon grease and found that their greased carbon fiber drag system never failed. Yes, that is never, as in not ever, not once, zero. This wet drag system has now found its way into the flagship two speed lever drag reels of many manufacturers, including Penn, Daiwa and Okuma. The engineers at Accurate used dry carbon fiber in 1996 with their first reels, then added Cal’s Drag Grease in 2007. They also now enjoy a zero failure rate with their drag systems. Greased carbon fiber is only now starting to show up in star drag reels. Pro Gear used these drag washers in the final runs of their Albacore Special and Classic Series reels, but the company is now gone. Daiwa is using greased carbon is their new Saltist 20 and 30. Okuma has a Carbonite drag washer, which is also greased carbon fiber. This is admittedly a short list, but I believe that it will be getting longer in the near future. If your reel has a dry carbon fiber drag system and has become sticky, the simple addition of a pure teflon grease is an option. If your reel has a different type of drag material, your local tackle shop may be able to install carbon fiber. Upgrades such as this usually involve adapting a Penn HT-100 or an aftermarket Carbontex drag washer. The addition of a Cal’s Drag Grease will then give your star drag reel the same smoothness and reliability enjoyed by the most expensive two speed lever drag reels.