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Tweaking Tackle For Performance
They said he couldn't, so John Pandeles proved them wrong. Using a custom two-speeded Penn International 12 T packed with Spectra and a short topshot of monofilament, the owner of a Southern California custom Corvette shop called the Speed Merchant landed a whopping 280-pound yellowfin tuna on the Royal Polaris.
Long-ranger John Pandeles shows his 280-pound
yellowfin, taken with the customized Penn International 12 T reel
held by Royal Polaris captain Rollo Heyn.
Southern California has always been a hotbed of technical innovation, of pushing engineering past the point of mere function to another plane of ultimate performance. And style. Style points are extremely important when it comes to the final product.
In terms of styles of fishing, Southern California also stays at the forefront. So it makes sense that most fishing reel innovations in the past couple of decades have evolved around methods used by SoCal anglers to target striped marlin and swordfish, yellowfin tuna and wahoo, plus the smaller, but demanding game fish such as yellowtail.
Lighter, stronger, quicker and better casting are good words to describe what anglers were looking for in reels when it came to stand-up fishing for these species. Simply put, to catch the fish they fish for, the anglers had to cast a distance, retrieve quickly and have the drag and gear strength to land fast-swimming fish.
It was not so easy to get what they wanted from the manufacturing establishment.
For example, Carl Newell, head of a Southern California manufacturing firm specializing in injection molding, wanted to get more castability out of one such company's reels. No stranger to fishing -- his company's first product was Tangle Free leader packs for freshwater angling -- Newell came up with an aluminum spool, crossbars, base clamps, long cast bearings and higher ratio gears.
Newell then came out with his own line of reels, along the way incorporating the latest graphite technologies to make them lighter and stronger. As for castability, there is not a finer casting reel on the market.
Inset: Accurate's new two
speed 30, the Platinum Twin Drag.
But that was just the start of reel "hot rodding" in Southern California. And, to give manufacturers credit, they have made great strides in trying to meet the needs of the area's anglers while having to supply a global marketplace.
After years of trying to land monster yellowfin tuna on Penn 6/0 reels, and often successfully, long-range anglers jumped at the opportunity provided by the Penn International series of big game reels. A large drag surface and a pre-set lever drag, combined with a sturdy frame gave the stand-up tuna fishermen the beef they needed to land yellowfin pushing 400 pounds.
The only problem was getting a bait out to the fish. Primarily designed for trolling applications, the Internationals lacked castability.
Along came the "Reel Man," Ray Lemme. He was the first to "blueprint" Internationals so that they would offer high drag settings and still be castable. The Internationals really caught on with the long- rangers after that, so much so that when Penn offered the International II series of two-speed big game reels, another avenue of reel customization opened up -- two-speed conversions.
Cal Sheets, an old friend of Lemme, filled that void, turning single-speed big game reels from Penn, Daiwa and Shimano into two- speed versions. For an additional charge, Sheets also would blueprint the reels. Since Lemme passed away, Cal's Customs has become the main provider of blueprinting in Southern California.
So, just what is blueprinting? Let's go see Sheets and find out.
"Blueprinting is a custom building of your reel to match what you want to do with it," Sheets explains. "We go both ways when working on reels. We have some customers who want to use light line on big reels, and others who want to use heavy line on little reels."
Here in the West, the call mainly is for heavy line on smaller reels, although not in all instances. Light-line marlin anglers come to mind, as do those searching for line-class world records for a variety of saltwater game fish.
But the main focus on custom reels centers on getting more out of a little, like Pandeles did with the 12 T. It makes sense, since so much fishing entails standing on deck for long periods of time, rod and reel in hand. The easier it is to handle your gear, the longer and harder you can fish.
For local fishing, plenty of small, lightweight, super casting reels are joining the Newells on the market, the latest being the Penn Graphite Series 535 and 545 reels designed for fishing 15 and 20-pound test. These join the Daiwa SL20SH and SL30SH reels and the Shimano TLD Star 15/30 as a perfect choice for light tackle saltwater casting for yellowtail, small tuna, dorado, white seabass and calico bass.
Shimano also has taken another tack, upgrading the basic baitcaster design with the aluminum Calcutta series and adding models, the 400 and 700 series, that are perfectly sized for saltwater applications. One of the most basic reel customizations Southern California saltwater anglers used to do was remove the levelwind from baitcasting reels, and the 700 S and 400 S versions of the Calcutta reels leave off the levelwind.
Meanwhile, it is the older Penn designs that have been subject to the most customization -- the Squidder, Jigmaster (500 series) and Senator (6/0 and 4/0) series.
And since anglers didn't want to fish light line on these reels, the Southern California hot rodders disdained lighter materials and instead went to the sturdier aerospace grade anodized aluminum. That trend started when Tiburon Engineering decided to manufacture replacement frames and spools to narrow down 6/0 and 4/0 reels. The company was astounded to find out that most of the interest was in the smaller 4/0 size and when they offered Jigmaster and Squidder sizes, the demand was equally high.
Then Peter Lee came out with the Lee-Pro machined side plates, and continued to move more and more towards his own reel by machining the frame and left side plate out of one piece of aluminum. To top things off, he started putting 6/0 guts inside his 4/0 size reels, machining his own, faster gear for the Lee-Pro K.C. reels. He also machined gearing for a stronger, lower gear ratio reel called the K.C. II.
Around the same time, Accurate appeared with side plates and frames for a wide range of Penn sizes, including the old Master Mariners. Then Pro-Gear debuted its 541, 545 and 251 reels featuring a one-piece frame with a two-screw takedown. The 251 is a Squidder size reel with the guts of a 500 series reel, while the 541 and 545 are Jigmaster and Jigmaster narrow sizes, respectively, with the guts of a 4/0.
545GS
Penn took notice, and offered the company's own 6/0 and 4/0 Senators with one-piece frames. The hot rodders responded by developing reels that are completely their own. As noted, Peter Lee already was cutting his own gears, and now the word is that he is contemplating manufacturing all the necessary pieces.
Pro-Gear is working on its own reel, the PG 20S, which will be the size of its 251 but will be built into a single-speed, lever drag reel.
"You know how all lever drags don't really disengage from the spool?' said Pro-Gear's president Eshe Kao. "Well, ours will completely disengage so the reel will cast like a star drag."
Accurate now sells only kits instead of completed reels, including a Magnum series that features the guts of a reel one size larger than the conversion. The company recently debuted the prototype of its own two-speed, big game reel -- the Platinum Twin Drag, which should be on the market in September.
The Platinum Twin Drag is a 30 size, two-speed, lever drag reel made of silver-finished 6061 T6 aluminum.
"Everything on it is ours, we have three new patents pending on the design," says David Nilsen of Accurate. "The reel features two drag plates, one on each side, which evenly distributes the weight of the drag on the spool. We've already been able to get 50 pounds of drag and still have freespool. This reel screams right out of the box."
A trend emerges here, especially when you look at what the major players in the big game reel field have been coming out with in recent years -- small lever drag reels are the hot ticket.
"Few reels get as many uses as the smaller two-speed, lever drags," says Dave Pfeiffer of Shimano. "We wanted ours to be extremely versatile. And its not just the West Coast that demands versatility. On the East Coast, you'll have one guy putting on light line for marlin and another guy using 50 and 60-pound test for grouper. You can take any of our TLD II reels out of the box and fish any line you want. You can fish 23 pounds of drag on our TLD 20 II. "
Shimano has done its own customization of its big game reels, offering LRS (Long Range Special) versions in the new graphite TLD 50 II and the aluminum Tiagra 50 W.
According to Shimano quality control engineer Elmer Alfafara, the lever drag is basically a cam, and the LRS versions feature a steeper ramp.
"If you take the two 50s and set the drag at strike at 22 pounds, at the full position on the straight 50 the drag would be 26 pounds, but on the LRS 50 it would be 32 pounds," says Alfafara. "It climbs quicker, but it also drops off quicker."
Maximum drag and range of drag are the two aspects that concern Cal Sheets the most when he is blueprinting one of his conversions. Sheets did all the work on the 12 T used by Pandeles.
One of the most important functions of a blueprint is to do away with what Sheets calls the "acceleration of drag," which is a function of the velocity of the drag system.
In other words, the faster the line is being ripped off a reel, the greater the drag. So, if you set your drag at strike on a lever drag reel with someone just pulling line off at a slow pace, your actual drag will be much greater when a yellowfin tuna is moving off at warp speed.
"We try to bring the slow pull and fast pull drag tolerances as close as possible," Sheets says. "Most of the time we get to three pounds, but we feel we have it if we get within five pounds."
PENN 535GS
Sheets also talks about the range of drag "along the slider." In the most extreme example, he has worked a Penn International 130 for fishing Hatteras bluefin tuna to the point where it would give 120 pounds of drag at strike right off the reel, but still have one to two pounds of drag at the bottom of the slider just above freespool.
Both Shimano and Sheets say the spring washer configurations in the lever drag have much to do with how much drag a reel offers. And, of course, the drag itself makes a difference.
Sheets often will use manufacturer's drags, like the Penn HT 100, but sometimes the situation calls for what Sheets terms "a more aggressive drag" like the late Dennis Bunker's Smoooth Drag material.
When working on the Penn 12s for Pandeles, Sheets put several thousand dollars into a prototype that stuffed a cutdown 30 drag into a double-dogged 12.
"That drag ended up being about the same size as the one Penn uses on its new 16 S International," says Sheets, who by the way has a friendly relationship with the Penn folks. He notes that the new 16 S is perfect out of the box for what most anglers around the world would use it for, adding: "If you use the 16 to fish 30 or even 40-pound test, it will fish just fine. But when you try to use 50, 60 or 80 you can run into some trouble."
Sheets also says Penn International reels offer much more drag out of the box than when they were first introduced, and the bigger reels like the 50 SW work fine for tuna applications. For a long-ranger who wants to fish big tuna with Spectra backing, or even wahoo with heavy line, Sheets will rework the 16 for $135, which includes a replacement of the bearings and a blueprint of the drag.
"When I'm done, it will cast reasonably well and have 15 pounds of drag on the slider," Sheets says. "That's 15 pounds at strike, with one to two pounds at the bottom. You can set it at 20 to 22 pounds at strike and still have freespool. So far the only person that hasn't been enough for has been Stasi Vellonakis. His will get up to 28 pounds at strike."
Vellonakis recently used his customized Penn 16 S to land a 287-pound yellowfin tuna on the Royal Polaris. He was using 80-pound Spectra topped off with a short length of 60-pound Izorline monofilament.
"Stasi felt he had 37 pounds of drag on his big fish at the end of the fight," Sheets recalls.
Sheets notes that Vellonakis and Pandeles are exceptions to the rule, and that he does all he can to talk folks out of using his two-speed 12 conversions for big tuna.
Penn's Special Senator 113HLW.
The ideal reel for Sheets is the 30 size. Shimano's TLD 30 II has become a popular "out of the box" choice for long-rangers fishing 60-pound test, while converting Penn 30 Ts to two-speeds is a big part of Sheets' business. Penn so far offers only the wide 30 SW in a factory two-speed.
Two-speeds definitely are what the public wants, as Fin-Nor found out. The Ahab series of more affordable big game reels got little attention until they were reintroduced in a two-speed version.
But you can count on the custom guys to keep coming up with hot rod versions even if the factories keep producing better and better products, as past performances certainly show they will. For one thing, it is not cost effective for major manufacturers to provide a reel that is designed with the needs of only one market in mind. For instance, Sheets has replaced the bearings in a Shimano TLD 30 II, and the spool on the enhanced reel spun free for 30 seconds, as opposed to the 17 seconds offered by the stock version.
"We could put those bearings in our factory versions, but then it would be reflected in the price," says Shimano's Dave Pfeiffer. "And we can't ask the grouper fisherman on the East Coast to pay for a feature he's never going to use."
Just about anything is available for a price, however -- especially in Southern California, where hot rods and hot rod reels are just as much a part of the scenery as giant tuna at the docks in San Diego.
⌐ Western Outdoors 1997. All rights reserved.
