I've got a bit of a problem with my baitcaster that I'm not sure if it is really a fault or failure, or if it is a symtom of the drag being over tightened!
During A recent trip to monduran my Pfluegar Trion 66 baitcaster developed a strange problem. The Levelwind would not work if the drag was tightend to a point that (to me)was suitable for fishing up in the sticks. Earlier I had tightened the drag up to a point that I thought was pretty well all she's got, enough so that when I tried to pull out the 50lb braid, it hurt. the drag was at a point where it felt the slightest bit snatchy to get the spool rolling but once started was still smooth. This was latter tested on a medium sized fish of 87cm which performed all the usual tricks in the sticks to evade capture but was subdued with a bit of extra thumb pressure.
OK so all is fine at this point, drag works smoothly under fish pressure and levelwind mechanism is all working too. no probs.
A session or so later we were doing a short troll past some submerged trees and my lure snagged up. I'm not sure if this is where it all goes A#se up but the reel lets out a bit of a "squeal" and after stopping the boat, I back the drag off and back up to the snag, retrieve lure and all is fine again and away we go.
Next session I'm casting away and remember I'd loosend the drag off earlier so I proceed to pull out some line to see just how tight I've got it. I pull out some line with reletive ease compared to how it was earlier and the levelwind is just sitting there going nowhere
WTF! busted after one fish >
So I back ther drag off further and pull out some line.......works fine now, just out of sync so I pull the sideplate off and remove spool in order to release some line to get it all back into sync again and put it back together.......pull out some line........yep all good again........retighten drag.......levelwind stalls again.....back off drag......works again (out of sync...again) repeat process again and same result. I pull everthing apart that you reasonably can with a pocket knife and nothing is obviously broken, so in disgust i put all bits back where they belong and curse at the moon (what more can you do in the middle of nowhere)
I should add that the point where the drag would seem to cause the levelwind stall was quite low. not even suitable for fishing for bass let alone barra. So now a few days later I've pulled it out to have another look at it and tightened the drag up till the problem repeats.....well it's not bad....you could certainly use it for the bass and maybe small barra, but will still stall the levelwind is pushed further!!!
Sorry about the Rambling tale of woe but I feel details are important to get to the root of any problem. I'm stuffed if i know how it can work sometimes and then not....I've looked at the schematics for the reel and whilst I have little experience with the inner workings of baitcasters, I can't see how it can randomly occur. Has anyone seen this before.? Reason is this reel is quite nice to use and holds a stack of braid which is handy when fishing the close reefs around Tweed so I'm not too keen to bin it. I'm also told there is a carnbontex drag upgrade available which would make all the difference as to get the drag pressure I needed originally, I had to tighten the knob real hard.
Cheers, Roo.
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