tkei
Each skipper is going to tell you something different. Try a couple of different options and work out what works for you. Every rod I own has been reworked in some way to personalise it to my tastes. Most rods of the STP range, have a roller on the tip and the rest plain eyes. I believe that is not good enough and have a roller added to replace the first eye from the reel. Believe it puts less strain on the line.
My point...
The same can be said for knots, YOU must decide what is best. Advice is great, but when fish are thick and fast your gut must be happy with what you tie. Go play. Try different knots. You can do that in your garden. Get some spare line, make a few leaders, get a heavy scale and then test the hell out of each knot. I push it so far with my in-shore fishing that on my 2 & 3kg rigs I tie different knots for different brands of line. I have found some lines hold a certain knot better or maybe it is just the way I tie them that makes them appear to respond differently under pressure.
I could rig any of my set ups in the dark of night and know they will work.
Angling starts in your tackle den, bugger around as much as possible.
I will listen to anyone and have often tried new ideas, but when the fish are DIK my whole crew look in one direction for a strong quick rig that they know will hold out. Yeah I have time to bugger around, but even when I was working like a mad man, I HAD TO FIND THE SETUPS THAT SUITED MY STYLE, MY BOATS, MY EQUIPMENT.
I think you are under powered for the bigger fish with your real selections, I have seen the firewolf come apart on a big geelbeck and the guy angling was no mug either, it is the star drag diawa you are thinking about?
A big tuna is going to do horrible things to that real, trust me. Not saying you won't land it but I am not sure how many more fish are going to come along after that on that real.
The penn 12/0 is a star drag?
Only hassle with chunking with those big old guys is when you hit strike, you go to full drag if you have pre-set. I have voiced my opinion re drags and pre-setting. That means you hook up into a passing car on the bigger fish as you can't ease into it. Fine on the troll, but on the chunk... ouch!
BG 60. We had a few. Cast with them at shoaling longfin. Mr Yellow grabbed the spinner on both and they were actually released overboard on the same trip along with the promise of never wasting money again. Longfin - sure, yellows, no chance. Maybe a small fish or two but after that, sinkers bro sinkers.
Like Fin-S said, mono does the job just fine. Yeah braid's more direct etc. When you got 60+ kg of yellow on, you don't need direct you know it's there, crank up the drag and when you hit the gunnells that's direct.
I reckon other than the fresh fish on the plate you caught, the tackle prep is up there with the best of it.
Good luck.
