Gear ratios, retrieve rates per species

[taggermike]

This might be unhelpful but ya gotta find the retrieve speed the fish want. But like surfisher said, slower is generally better for the bass. For rockfish you're usually fishing strait down and bouncing along the bottom so slow is fine. Bonito like a jig moving farely fast. Surface iron retrieve is set by how the iron is kicking. While yoyo style is as fast as you can turn the handle. Reels can have both high gear ratios and torque now. A Trinidad is 6:1 but you can still button down the drag and grind. Some older high ratio reels just have no power. Gear ratios and line per crank differ by reel size. The length of line a little bait caster pulls per crank is nothing compared to one turn of a Penn 6/0. So it all varies but 4-5 on a ocean conventional and 6-7 on a bait caster are fine. Mike