Shimano Metanium DC Drag Issues

[BassingBen93]

I have a Shimano Mentanium DC that is roughly 3 years old with not a ton of hours on it. I just recently was out fishing and the drag is not working. I have the drag tightened all the way down and the spool still slips as if the drag is not even hardly tightened down.

Curious if you any of you Reel Cleaners / Gurus have any thoughts on what would cause this and how to troubleshoot / fix it? Being a $400 reel I would like to get this fixed or send it to some one for it to be fixed.

Thanks in advance.

[Mike Cork]

Does it have braid on it?

[big g]

I have a Shimano Scorpion, great  casting reel, drag stinks.  I have to use my thumb as a drag.

[BassingBen93]

Does it have braid on it?

Mike..... It does indeed. 50lb Power Pro. I normally have a leader on it and its paired up with a 744DX as a jig / trig rod. When the issue started I was using a buzzbait to straight braid.

[Mike Cork]

Braid can create a tube and start rotating on the reels spool. Have someone walk the line out, and when you hit the spool take and tap it to the spool. Then wind your line back up. This should fixed the lack of drag. If it doesn't let us know.

[Oldfart9999]

Be sure you loosen the drag when you are done or you can ruin the drag discs.
Rodney

[BassingBen93]

I stripped the braid off the reel and spooled up 17lb assassin. Must have been the "tube"  in the line you were referring to Mike. Very interesting. I had never had that happen on my other braid spooled reels.

Rodney -- That is a great tip. I have been doing that the past couple years after someone else mentioned the same.

Thanks for the help. Glad it wasnt the reel.

[bigjim5589]

Ben, I made the same mistake many years back, when I was first starting to use braid, and found the answer here on UB in discussions about reels. You can also use some mono type line as a backing direct to the reel spool and then attach the braid.  Only needs to be several yards, just enough to get a good grip on the spool, but some folks will back the braid with more, since that requires less braid to fill the spool and mono lines are less costly.

Braid doesn't have any stretch so it won't tighten down on the spool like other lines do that have stretch.  I know of a fellow who did the same thing with a big saltwater fly reel, and he was using a braided line as backing for his fly line since it's thinner than dacron backing and he would gain some extra backing capacity. He couldn't figure out why fish were still taking line. Most folks use an arbor knot to attach the line to the spool and with no stretch, the braid spins on the spool instead of the spool working against the drag. So a reel with a good drag, just stops the spool from spinning, but not the braid.  I'll bet a lot of folks have had to figure that out eventually.