I never thought it was an advantage to have lever drag over a star drag...but I was dead wrong. I’m a lefty, so my brand options are limited for 2 speed lever drag and am going to upgrade to Accurate this year in time for my annual grouper and amberjack trip. Excellent explanation and thanks for great info!
Good stuff! Average star drag reels where giving me one to two seasons before the drag would get to jerky to trust anymore. Went to accurate lever drag reels and am going into the 4th season on them and they are just as smooth as the day I bought them. Hanging a rig and having it peel drag at 3mph I till you can stop a boat is pure torture on a reel. The accurate reels eat it up without breaking a sweat. They are the best recommendation I’ve got from you yet!
HELL YEAH Brother!!! And you are very hard on stuff!! I guarantee I could swap a brand new Fury for your 4 year olds and with your eyes closed you would think they were the same age after a few cranks. I have 13 year olds that feel just like new. No BS
This video is great! It’s one thing to read about twin drag and another to see!!! In your opinion... looking at two different reels. The Turn 500 narrow and the valiant 500 narrow. In your opinion which one would you purchase?
The biggest issue for me is how much the drag settings change on their own so to speak throughout the day. Because the drag discs (washers) can only be as large as the main gear, manufacturers stack multiple washers and fiber discs all on top of each other. They don’t use the simple springs you find on lever drags, instead the stacked washers are cupped. Over time (over the course of a day too), the cups you squeeze down flat can change with heat from the sun, cold water and fatigue over time which leaves you with a drag that can vary pressure all day. The biggest problem is the energy needed to get the spool paying out from a dead stand still can be higher than what you set the drag to. In other words, a drag set to 10lbs pulls out nice and smooth at the time you set it. After it sits in a rod holder for a while it can now take 12lbs or more to get the spool STARTED in its spinning, once it gets moving it can be ok, but I can’t have my reels do that. I want my drag to stay where I put it. There are a few other downsides too, like ending up with permanently flattened washers over time. Hope this makes sense. Thanks for your support brother!👍👍👍🙏
This guy sounds exactly like Brad Pitt. Imagine brad pitt and you will hear it! Awesome video BTW. Just bought me a penn fathom 60LW with a star drag, and am just wondering what the real difference is between the star and lever drag.
For casting I’d use an Accurate Fury 500. Unfortunately prices had to go up on everything. They used to run around $300 for a 2 speed. I’m not sure what they are now. Some guys like Avet reels. They feel decent, but they have no anti reverse bearing and no bearing in the knob. There are a few other things that accurate reels have that you won’t find in other reels in that price range. Like twin drag in most models. I would recommend getting an Accurate Fury in single speed vs any other brand in 2 speed to meet your budget. 👍👍
For jigging I prefer a start drag only because it’s faster to engage because of the switch. I use these Terns amzn.to/2XQkYbl for star drag because they have enormous twin drag systems that are butter-smooth.
have you had any problem with the ARB bearings, i have heard that they go out pretty quick and with no anti reverse pawl the reel it pretty much out of the game til you change those ARB's
To be totally honest I had only one go bad since 2004 and I have had over 100 of these Accurate reels. It was right when they introduced the “cast control”. I over rinsed the reel and it locked up the next day. I washed it way too long and too hard. Since then they have added a few fail-safes to keep that from happening. I haven’t had one do anything other than perform perfectly! I know a lot of other reel companies like to sight that as a common issue to justify that they stay away from AR bearings for dawg and pawl. AR bearings are very expensive. That’s why they stay away. Accurate uses highest end bearings in their knobs as well and never had one fail even though they are totally exposed to salt water.
@@MikeSmedleyOLDSCHOOLSTRIPERSwould be thankful.. wanna do some longer casting this season for more hook ups.. have two 6500s n good shape don't wanna have to buy whole new reel when I have bout for bait casters already.
That’s a fine reel. Lever drags are the most difficult to cast, but the drag system is by far the best out of all the other types. It’s harder to cast because there is no tension knobs. It’s a fine reel if you’re cast baits to leave out for a while, but it’s not great for casting and retrieving over and over. It takes a little more technique to cast it, but it’s not too hard. Just follow this video closely. Start with short casts and work longer. Take your time. Remember to tap the spool immediately after taking your thumb off. You can tap and drag the spool to a stop at first until you’re comfortable and then work on the quick tap on and off real quick. A few taps will also help at first.
This video is a little misleading in my opinion. You say 01:59 you look at the sideplate of the reel and you can the size of the drag. Sure you can determine the maximum possible diameter of the drag washer but that does not even remotely tell you what the maximum drag output of the reel is. Most if not all star drag reels have more than one drag washer and they typically use both sides of each washer to apply friction. So even with much smaller (in diameter) drag washers some star drags can have more drag surface area and put out more drag than lever drags (that have a much larger diameter drag washer). 03:09 Then you say to buy a star drag with a big main gear so you get a big drag. This is misleading too. The size of the gear has absolutely nothing to do with how much drag the reel is capable of putting out. The size of gear has to do with torque and your ability to turn the handle on a fish. Gear size matters and gear ratio matters even more regarding cranking power. The amount of surface area of all combined drag washers is a much better determining factor in how much drag a reel is capable of putting out than the size of the gearbox or the diameter of a single drag washer. I think it would've been a better comparison if you actually removed the multiple drag washers from the star drag and show/explained to your viewers how both sides of the washers are used. I appreciate the time you took to make this video and it's nice to show people the internals of reels who might be too afraid of opening up one themselves, just think you could've been a little clearer on explaining how the stacked star drags work and how total drag surface area helps determine total drag output of a reel....
I said SIZE every time. That’s exactly what I meant. Small discs can’t compete with discs several times larger no matter how many you stack. Nearly every star drag uses stacks. They all use stacks to help overcome the weakness and inconsistencies with small drag discs. Even if the real is capable of high drag settings small discs in a stack get hot quicker and consistency moves all over the place. Discs and gears expand with the heat and performance goes to poop. After you spend alot of time with a good lever drag reel you will probably agree that it’s worlds apart from star drags, even if you only use lighter settings. There is a MASSIVE performance jump between the two designs. Thanks for the comment brother. I really appreciate your time and opinions. 👍👍good stuff.
@@MikeSmedleyOLDSCHOOLSTRIPERS Thanks. I currently have 6 Avet Raptor's and several non raptors that I service myself yearly so I am very familiar with lever drag function and operation. I have actually replaced all my offshore star drags with lever drags but not because my star drags were not smooth. It's because I like to know exactly how much drag I'm applying at any give time. (No more dogging down a star drag to break off when hung in a wreck, then forgetting to loosen the drag back up, and instantly breaking off on the next fish someone hooks). I occasionally bring inexperienced fisherman on the boat and there's no way they can accidently over tighten a lever drag. I also set my max drag based on leader size so I can apply maximum pulling force to fish without worrying about breaking my leader. That plus the performance of low gear and very high drag output while keeping the weight down in the reel is what led me to swap over. I agree with your analysis on larger vs smaller washers and nothing you said in the video was "wrong" because you were referring to the physical size (diameter) of the drag washer. When I say it's misleading, it's because I think it is misleading to your viewers who likely do not know much about drag systems and how they work. When you say "bigger drag", I'm willing to bet a large portion of them equate that with "more drag", "more powerful drag", or "stronger drag". Only knowing what I learned from this video, if I grabbed two star drag reels and compared the size of the gearboxes I would think the one with the bigger gearbox has a bigger (stronger, more powerful) drag. Or when I look at that tiny star drag gear housing verses the very large lever drag washer in the beginning of your video. I would think the lever drag has a much stronger, much more powerful drag. When in reality there are star drag reels with small gearboxes that put out more drag than some lever drags with massive gearboxes. I realize that is not what you specifically said, or even what you meant, but that's just what I was thinking a lot of uninformed viewers were going to take away from this video.... just wanted to better explain my observation. Have a nice day...
Sure. I agree. Every reel manufacturer does different things and they cut different corners and you won’t know for sure until you open the reel. I think you would agree that 10 random lever drag reels will have smoother and better performing drags than 9 star drag reels in the same size and price range. I have a $600 Bait caster star drag that can’t touch a $150 lever drag reel the same size, but you will never see the opposite. That’s the point I was trying to make in the video. Thanks again for the comments!! Good quality conversation!!👍thanks brother.
This video is kinda misleading. You have to consider how many sides, and how many drag plates are inside the main gear itself in a star drag. Ultimately, you can end up racking up more surface area. Look at a 9/0 or 6/0 as an example. Also as long as you have hard, lubricated drags, and everything is square inside a reel, forces should be distributed through out the system until little force is wasted on an excessive surface.
Cary Perket It’s not misleading at all. You can stack all day long, but the concave shape of the discs allow only a fraction of the surface areas to make contact. Because they are con-caved and not flat these small touching areas built heat incredibly fast. Unless you have the drag cranked all the way down to flatten out the discs you will never come close to the same surface areas touching. If a lever drag needed it, you could stack discs there as well, but it’s so close to a perfect simple system it doesn’t need it. In my opinion a star drag is far from perfect, thus the need to stack and stack and stack.
