Having fished alongside Fishingfreak and his partner I can say what he says holds. I think a lot of people overpower the fish they are after. Of all the tripes we made east of Chatham and into CCBay we only had one giant come up and try to take down a Daisy of pink/purple shell squid in amongst all the SBFT's we had crash the baits.
We use some cost effective ( read:cheap) Ande Rods, 6 ft long, rated 20-50 lb with Penn 113HS reels spooled with 400 yds of 40 mono. Also we have two 6 ft. Ande rods rated 40-60lb with rollers and Shimano TLD 25's with 400 yds of 50lb mono. We started the season with a Penn Slammer rod and an old 6/0 Senator which was a veteran of years of cod jiggin abuse and it never failed and caught tuna just as well as the other more "geared too" the sport tackle.
The rods Ande makes are composite Graphite/fiberglass spun in the old Howald spiral process where the last third if the rod ( the tip) is solid. 59.00 bucks, 79.00 for the heavier roller version. You can't kill them and for the dough they are surprisingly well made.
Most of the sbft's caught run 20 to 50 pounds, with the majority in the 30lb class. If you hook a bigger fish it takes more time is all. We had 'em to sixty plus and never had any trouble.
Now if they run up to 100-150 then we better have our doodoo together and the rods could still handle it but the boat handling becomes the greater factor for success.
They are tough fish, no doubt about that but like anything, you can overpower them and if you are like us, we want to enjoy the fight and try to keep the balance even between the chances of both man and fish.
Hybrid Mode
