|
|
| I'm kind of embarrassed to ask this as I've been casting for muskie for a long time... but I've read some posts where people say to palm the reel and thumb the spool when pulling on a jerkbait (to save the IAR). I must be missing some part of the picture, because when I am palming an average reel (6500 say) my thumb is forward and high of the spool (my thumb up on top where the Abu plastic thumbplate thing is). My palm is pressed agains the side plate of the reel. For the thumb to touch the spool it's got to curl down over the top edge of the side plate (and touch the top of the spool with thumb's tip). This is not "thumbing the spool" in the way one thumbs it during a cast (with the soft face of the thumb on the rear-facing side of the spool). So when people talk about thumbing during a glider retrieve (say a reef hawg or weagle) what kind of thumbing is it?
Maybe my hand is too far back? The trigger is between my ring and pinky fingers. If I remove the Abu plastic thumb rest and move my whole hand farther up the rod and over more of the reel I can do the thumb-tip spool-touch a bit better, but it still seems clumsy.
TIA for any ideas. A photo would be even better, but I don't want to ask too much. I need to start treating my IAR better though. |
|
| |
|
Posts: 8828
| I hold the foregrip, so my advice is worhtless here, but.... Instead of changing the way you fish, possibly leading to botched hooksets and lost fish, aside from having to re-learn something that's already become automatic after fishing for years and years? Wouldn't it be much easier to order a spare AR bearing and just keep it in the boat? Or are they pressed in the reel in such a way that you can't change them on the fly?
|
|
| |
|
| You make some awfully good points -- hard to argue.
When I look at the schematic for 6501 I can't see a part number for the bearing. Generally though I'm not even sure the IAR is the only issue--I just get the sense from posts that I've read that jerking on big baits without thumb on spool is bad for reel. Since Abu reels I've used for jerkbaiting get rough and loud very fast (much faster than those I use for prop baits for eg) I figure my method is at fault. I'm moving away from Abu and onto better reels, but wanted to get some more life out of my remaining Abus.
If I use a Calcutta for jerkbaits it looks like the replacing the IAR bearing is pretty easy and a $20 part. So maybe you've got the right idea all right.
Do you jerk or twitch big baits using foregrip without encountering reel problems? Can I ask what reel you're using? I've only used 6000 Abu's for this, and they can't hack it. |
|
| |
|
Posts: 366
| The position of my hand/palm when working a bait is really the same as when I'm casting and thumbing the spool to keep from backlashing, so if I were working a heavy hard pulling jerkbait it is very easy for me to thumb the spool before and during each jerk, which is what I believe you've heard other people describe. Every time I go into the figure-8 I'm hitting the thumb bar releasing the spool, and thumbing it for control fighting a fish as well. Probably completely unnecessary as the drag systems now are more than sufficient to do this for me, but at this point I do it without thinking about it.
Even while doing this, I still have IAR's wear out on me. They just aren't made to last forever with the forces we put on them. You can certainly extend the life of them by thumbing the spool to take the pressure off them with very high, or repetitive fatigue loading, but like EA said if you have to sacrifice your natural holding position comfort and dexterity you have to think about what you are saving in $$ for a little longer IAB life, versus missing out on a fish because you're trying to do something beyond your dexterity level. But, depending on who you are, you might be able to train yourself to hold it differently in fairly quick order, and be better off in the long run without that much effort into learning to do things differently. People with no arms can learn to drive cars with their feet, for example, so moving your hand up or down might not be that difficult if you try it for a while. Of course, I've tried fore-gripping and didn't like it at all, so to each his own.
Ryan
|
|
| |
|
Posts: 8828
| I've used the regular abus 6500C3 and C4, Shimano Cardiff, Penn 975, the Diawa Millionaire, the Abu Record, and right now I have the Toro Winch and the regular Revo Toro in my regular rotation. The only reels I've had toruble with the AR bearing is on the Record and the Millionaire. The Millionaire just needed a good cleaning and it was fine. The Record broke in it's second day, throwing a 1 oz spinnerbait, so I doubt it was anything I did. There are advantages to palming, for sure. But the comfort of palming the grip outweighs any benefit that I can see. |
|
| |
|
| EA and Ryan -- thanks for your feedback guys. Bottom line is you're right that it would be foolish for me to try and come up with a new grip/retrieve style solely because I wanted to save a little wear and tear on my IAR solely on certain baits/retrieves. I've already got backup reels, so better to keep doing it the way I know and just have a few backup IAR bearings, wormgear parts. |
|
| |
