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I’m going to be building a Century Surfmachine 10’. 1-4oz. mainly used at OBX blues and Spanish. Need distance with braid and fast retrieving. looking for reel recommendations and size IRT, Visser, Van Stal, Daiwa, Gosa, others

Kilsong, one of the best-informed anglers here, likes his IRT spinners and does all kinds of jigging and deep-dropping with them, where I would want a conventional reel. He surfcasts with them, too. There are a couple of questions which anyone can answer, with user experience. 1. The bail. Is the bail automatic or manual? I like a bail, like on a Saragosa or some Daiwas, that I have to rotate over the top of the spool by hand. No automatic nuthin' for me. If Kilsong's commented on this, I've missed it. I emailed IRT about this, maybe they reply and maybe they don't. 2. The Dual Drag arrangement is about $100 more then the single drag stack reels, available from the 500 size on up. Given the price of the basic reel, it's a reasonable extra expenditure; if you're looking at a $600 reel in the first place, what's another $100, plus or minus? That said, what's the gain? Better, more reliable drag in high topic temperatures? Better top end drag if you're dragging a Goliath Grouper out of his hole? Reel design emphasizes ruggedness, there are no long-cast spools (which mean a long shaft; possibly bendable by a high drag load) on the website. 3. Sealing. I think the kind of intensive sealing on VS reels is probably overkill for me, but the sealing question has come up. How water resistant is the reel? 4. Bearings and lubrication. What class of bearing and how lubricated from the factory? I don't think it's been discussed.

A question, and a speculation, on "twin drags." This comes in response to Kilsong's preference for the IRT Dual Drag reels, but isn't limited to them. I don't own anything with dual drags. If you do and have a comment, make sure you tell us what reel it is that you own. I have assumed, all along, that the real value of a dual-drag or twin-drag design isn't the ridiculously high loads you can place on the reel. The gain is in drag smoothness as line is taken, the diameter of the loaded spool shrinks; since the lever arm (distance from the surface of the loaded spool to the spool axle) shrinks, leverage declines, and the actual drag load increases. However contra-intuitive, you'd have to reduce the drag as the diameter of the loaded spool is reduced in order to maintain the same load on the drag. A related thought or two. First, current braids are skinnier then those of just a few years ago, never mind mono. This reduces spool shrinkage when Moby Whale climbs on, and takes off. So there's less need for twin drags then there might have been. Second, modern reels can, with a single drag setup, exert ridiculous amounts of pressure on a fish, enough to pull me over the side of any boat, if I'm careless. There's a Torque 300 in my basement, lined with a solid braid for jigging tuna. I never used it ... the box says it can exert 29 lbs. of pressure. Having played with it, I believe the blurb. Zcoker has remarked that he catches blacktip sharks on a Stella 8000, with a rated top drag of 60 lb. SIXTY LBs on a surf reel? That's wild. That last anyone would see of me, with that much drag on a surf fish, would be the drag marks of two feet and a belly. And my nose. Do those of you who fish an Accurate reel with two drags, Avet or Maxel with what they call two drags, Okuma Makaira, IRT DD or anything else, feel you're getting something for your extra bucks? I suspect that Accurate, AFAIK the first twin-drag user, shows the best result. They put a drag washer and pressure plate on each side of the spool, on their lever drags. No doubt they fenced off their design with lots of patents, as broadly written as possible. Avet has had - I suspect - to step around that arrangement. Maxel, I think, got in a patent fight with Accurate, and lost. The Makaira gets great love on Alan Tani's site, but that may or may not be because of their drag design. Accurate's TwinSpin spinning reel did not get love from Alan Hawk in its' first iteration, and user reports are few. Ladies, Gentlemen, persons of indeterminate gender, those who are confused, the floor is open. Kilsong, I'm going to start another thread with IRT - specific questions.