I got a chance to do one of my favorite things recently: field test a reel I've been dying to use.
The reel was the Accurate 665 two-speed. The quarry: yellowfin tuna on a 10-day trip on the Excel.
The reel was loaded to the brim with 80-pound Blackwater Spectra to a 6-foot topshot of 60-pound fluorocarbon. (Maybe leader is a better term since it's so short?)
I put it on a Calstar Grafighter 7470H. The combo ended up working like a charm on yellowfin from 25 to 70 pounds. Not huge fish, but the action was hot and heavy at times: Cast a bait, hook-up, fight the fish, gaff, retie, repeat. And repeat. And repeat. We had wide-open tuna fishing everywhere we went, from Guadalupe to the Ridge. The reel definitely got put through the ringer.
The 665 was kept in high gear 90-plus percent of a time, but when the fish were just out of gaff range low gear made things easier. It was great just keeping the tip up and be able to straight grind or do super short strokes.
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