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tlapinski · 02-21-2009, 09:25 AM

I picked up a 27 last spring and fished it pretty hard all season long. I have been through Penns, VS's, Saltigas, etc.. over the years and was pretty happy with the reel. The 27 is about the same size as my VS250. The reel was not flawless, though. About a month after I started fishing the reel, it ran into problems. Apparently there were issues with some of the clutches on the first run of 27's and mine was one of them. One night the reel seized up. Basically the clutch froze and I had to rewind the line back on by hand after a looooong drift on an outgoing tide at a breachway. I quickly sent the reel back to ZB and it was immediatley fixed and was back in my hands in under a week.

After that little "hiccup", the reel was flawless. I fished back and forth between my VS and ZB for the remainder of the season. For what ever it is worth, I only found one benefit over the VS though. I experienced fewer "wind knots" throughout the season on the ZB as compared to the VS. The line lay of the ZB is much different than the VS. VS's are known for laying more line on the edges of the spool than the middle. This can be fixed by using a line winder when spooling up and manually laying more line to the middle of the spool so that it balances out after a few casts. The ZB lays the line evenly on the spool from the get go. I can only theorize that this line lay on the VS lends itself to wind knots.

As for the drag, I have mixed feelings. The ZB drag is a little weird to get used to. I have been told it has some sort of progressive drag where in the amount of drag pressure changes throughout a stretch of line peeling off the spool. Less - more - less. This makes it almost seem like your drag is not set properly at times. Due to this, I would change my drag setting throughout an outing. This led to more bent and opened hooks as I would often set the drag too high due to the initial feeling of having too light odf a drag setting. I guess this can simply be written off as user error, but still something that is always in the back of my head. By the end of the season, the ZB drag did seem to be slightly less smooth than it had been at the start of the season. I still have to open her up and see if it just needs to be cleaned or if it was all in my head.

Pound for pound, I honestly can not say that the VS or ZB is better than the other reel yet. Another seaosn of testing and beating her up is on the horizon and I still hold back with a final opinion of the reel.

02-21-2009, 09:25 AM	#4
tlapinski All up in the Interweb! iTrader: (1) Join Date: Mar 2002 Location: In the dog house. Posts: 5,205	I picked up a 27 last spring and fished it pretty hard all season long. I have been through Penns, VS's, Saltigas, etc.. over the years and was pretty happy with the reel. The 27 is about the same size as my VS250. The reel was not flawless, though. About a month after I started fishing the reel, it ran into problems. Apparently there were issues with some of the clutches on the first run of 27's and mine was one of them. One night the reel seized up. Basically the clutch froze and I had to rewind the line back on by hand after a looooong drift on an outgoing tide at a breachway. I quickly sent the reel back to ZB and it was immediatley fixed and was back in my hands in under a week. After that little "hiccup", the reel was flawless. I fished back and forth between my VS and ZB for the remainder of the season. For what ever it is worth, I only found one benefit over the VS though. I experienced fewer "wind knots" throughout the season on the ZB as compared to the VS. The line lay of the ZB is much different than the VS. VS's are known for laying more line on the edges of the spool than the middle. This can be fixed by using a line winder when spooling up and manually laying more line to the middle of the spool so that it balances out after a few casts. The ZB lays the line evenly on the spool from the get go. I can only theorize that this line lay on the VS lends itself to wind knots. As for the drag, I have mixed feelings. The ZB drag is a little weird to get used to. I have been told it has some sort of progressive drag where in the amount of drag pressure changes throughout a stretch of line peeling off the spool. Less - more - less. This makes it almost seem like your drag is not set properly at times. Due to this, I would change my drag setting throughout an outing. This led to more bent and opened hooks as I would often set the drag too high due to the initial feeling of having too light odf a drag setting. I guess this can simply be written off as user error, but still something that is always in the back of my head. By the end of the season, the ZB drag did seem to be slightly less smooth than it had been at the start of the season. I still have to open her up and see if it just needs to be cleaned or if it was all in my head. Pound for pound, I honestly can not say that the VS or ZB is better than the other reel yet. Another seaosn of testing and beating her up is on the horizon and I still hold back with a final opinion of the reel.
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