One of my least favorite jobs is filling a 130-pound- class reel with new line. Whenever you spool up with heavy line, you have to wind it tightly enough to keep it from burying down into the spool when you apply heavy drag on a big fish - the kind of drag that this weight of line can take without breaking. If you don't put it on tight enough, the line will bury itself into the spool as the fish takes line under heavy pressure. This inevitably results in a broken line.
And since we regularly use 80-plus pounds of drag on our 130s, that means it takes one heck of a lot of work from two guys to pack the line on properly, unless one of them owns a tackle shop with an automatic line winder. However, most tackle shops still don't wind the line tightly enough for heavy drag pressures - even when using a mechanical line winder.
Normally, one man winds and carefully guides the line on level while his companion holds the new spool of line and applies drag to the spool by pressing the new spool down onto the dock, or a scrap of wood (not the teak deck!), with a long-shanked, heavy-duty screwdriver, dowel or bait de-boner passing through the middle of the spool.
The guy holding the spool gets the easier job by far since he can use his body weight to apply pressure to the spool just by leaning down on the screwdriver. The poor devil doing the cranking on the reel is the one who suffers. Since the average 12/0 or 130-class reel holds up to 1,000 yards of line, there is a whole lot of hard cranking required to fill an empty one. I know of no one who eagerly anticipates this job.
The average guy can only wind on between 50 and 200 yards at a time under adequate pressure without having to either take a break or switch off with the guy holding the fresh line.
When refilling with light line classes, which do not have to be packed as tightly, you can drop the spool of line into a bucket of water and one man can fill the reel.
But the work doesn't stop when the reel is full: You still have to splice or tie a double line and attach outrigger chaffing marks at predetermined distances from the connection to a snap swivel or wind-on leader.
If you're using a wind-on leader, the mate must construct the leader, fit it with a mechanical connector and then connect the leader to the double line before the reel is ready to fish. The overall process is so complicated and time-consuming that it's almost impossible to get it done if there's any real fishing action taking place.
However, the worst of all scenarios comes when a record or money fish shows up in the spread right after you've decided that the nick or fray you discovered in your line "doesn't look too bad" and you decide to change it out later that night.
A New Front End
Top crews always keep good, fresh line on all their reels, all the time. The obvious answer to keeping all reels full of new, undamaged line is one that I first saw used in the Bahamas' giant bluefin tuna fishery.
Since you usually only damaged the first hundred feet or so of line, someone started making up spare "front ends" ready to put on a reel that needed new line for whatever reason.
In those days - a bit before my time - laid linen line was the gold standard. Constructed of multiples of three strands, laid linen line was made the same as modern "laid" nylon rope. All competent seamen back then could splice rope and quickly join two pieces of rope, or fishing line. Using the same splicing technique, they could also make a loop and construct double lines with a splice that did not weaken the line.
When Dacron line took over from linen, the splicing got even easier. The Chinese-finger-puzzle effect of the woven Dacron line allowed quick and easy 100 percent splices. By inserting the ends of two pieces of Dacron into the hollow core of their counterpart with a small needle supplied by the manufacturer, crews could make almost invisible 100 percent splices that slipped though guides with ease. Crews soon learned to make splicing tools from a short piece of light, single-strand wire leader. (See illustration, above left.)
I've used Dacron backing for decades on all line classes from 30-pound class up to and including 130-pound class. Dacron offers the most consistent breaking strain of all modern lines, and it breaks closer to its real, labeled breaking strength than any other. When used as backing and rarely exposed to the sun's ultraviolet rays, it stays good for years and years, and once spooled, it never needs to be changed.
IGFA Rules and Backing
The IGFA rules state that backing connected to the working section of line must test within, or less than, the line class on which the record is being claimed. They also stipulate that if you use backing, a sample must be sent in along with the line and leader used to catch the fish. This rule is probably broken the most and is the least-often checked in record claims - especially if the angler states that backing was not used in the record claim.
