Quote:
Originally Posted by TJones
..... these creature are smart , and they knew i had something to do with the pain and suffering their family member was having . do i really want to play this out , possibly have the rod and kayak yanked out from under neath me ? or risk injury to animal . so i did what i had to do and cut the line with about 50 yards remaining . i hope things turn out ok for the dolphin.
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I'll be honest: what you did was pretty foolish and irresponsible.
What do you think is going to happen to that 450yards of spectra? Best case scenario is the Dolphin will drag it around until it finds a way to snag it on something and breaks free. Worst case scenario is the dolphin freaks out and tries to keep running away from it till it completely exhausts itself and dies.
First scenario will probably happen in shallow water around structure and kelp, scenario two that dead dolphin could end up anywhere possibly wash back to shore. What then happens to the spectra? Well..... either way it will sink to the bottom all four football fields of it and then it starts to tangle up with stuff. Rocks, kelp, anything stupid enough to run into it like rockfish, lobsters or crabs. It's going to lie there waiting for anyone to drop a Iron down, or any bottom rig to snag it and if any of the many fisherman that hang it over the years are using lighter line then your spectra they are now going to loose their lures, and rigs to it. If it ends up in a popular area that's fished hard over time it's going to create a huge ball of crap that snags up anything that's dropped on it. I know some reefs that are almost unfishable (Venice reef is the worst) because of all the broken line on them. It's spectra, it's not going to rot, it's not going to loose it's strength, it's not going to disappear. It's going to be down there screwing things up for decades.
So what could you have done differently?
Well when something is taking all your line, and you can't possibly stop them you can still get out of it without leaving hundreds of yards of line in the water.
First tighten your drag as much as you can and wait until the line is 3/4 down the spool, then point the rod directly towards the fish take the reel in both hands like your holding a ball someone is trying to knock out of your hands. Now watch the spool. As the line disappears the effective diameter of the spool is getting smaller and smaller. That means it's turning faster and faster but it also means the leverage of the line to turn the spool is decreasing, the drag is increasing, but also your ability to stop the spool is increasing. Watch it get smaller holding the reel in both hands and when it get's down to a few dozen turns then take each thumb and press both sides of the spool as hard as you can, and you will be able to completely stop the spool.
It's all leverage. If you thumbed the line with a single thumb, you'd have the same torque as the line coming off the reel it would slip and do to it's irregular shape and high speed it would burn you. The spool is smooth it's not going to burn you, and since your thumbs are hitting it further from the center of the spool you have a huge leverage advantage so you can stop it.
It's like your making your own disc brake out of the reel spool. Think about it a disc brake the size of a dinner plate can stop a car going 100 miles an hour, your two thumbs are like brake pads on the two sides of your spool disc brake.
Do not try to touch the line do not just thumb the line on the spool because it will burn your thumb. Use both thumbs on each side of the spool out towards the edge and press like hell and you will safely stop the spool.
Now you just wait. You don't have to jerk, you don't have to pull just hold on keep the spool from turning and wait for the fish, seal, dolphin boat or whatever else you've hooked to break the line. Sometimes with fish you will actually stop them. I turned a 9ft Hammerhead like this on the beach at Padre Island, and stopped a Marlin like this fishing a dead boat locally fishing mono. It was actually kind of crazy sitting there watching that mono stretch like a huge rubber band but the fish never broke it and turned.
Keep on mind that Spectra unlike mono is slick by nature which means even in the best scenario knots are never 100%. That means that when whatever is pulling your line puts enough pressure on the line to break it, it's almost always going to slip and break at the your splice or knot. If not there it will break in the first hundred feet or so probably if there is a flaw from you using it. The first hundred feet has been used the rest is like new.
Add to that that the friction of the dolphin pulling the line through the water causes there to be more pressure at the knot then at your reel.
Again...Think for a second.
The reel just has the pressure of your drag setting, but now imagine being in a boat moving at speed with four hundred yards of line out trying to reel it towards the boat. It would be a bitch because all that line creates a ton of friction and drag just going through the water. Well add that drag to the pressure of your drag when something is taking all your line. The pressure on your line at that Dolphin is maybe a third or more greater then it was at your reel.
I know it looks like I'm bashing you but I'm really just telling you this stuff so you and others wont make this same mistake again.
You made a mistake, now you know, don't do it again.
Jim