Tilefish

[Team Off The Hook]

guys looking to do some tilefishing this year. i personally do not believe in electric reels. whats a good reel and not to expensive that will suit tile fishing?

[HBKFishing]

You have to have a lot of braided line. YOu fish in up to 900 foot of water or so. IF it was me, I'd lok at the larger Penn conventional reels. Maybe larger than the Penn 321 GTI model.

[Dave A]

I do quite abit of tilefishing and can personally tell you that Shimano Torium 30's and Daiwa Saltist 40's work great and they are both less then $200.00.

[Tin Squid]

An Avet LX in 4:1 or thereabout gear ratio has a winch-like retrieve which would suit you well with a big one on down deep. It will set you back about $230.00

[Ol Pedro]

I have been using a 3/0 Penn hs with a speed handle or my Diawa 6-1 30 but it doesn't have much torque . A 3/0 or 4/0 Penn hs shouldn't set you back more then $150.00 . Used $60.00 . The braid makes all the difference as you can put so much more on the reel . I don't use the expensive stuff . Stealth works fine for me .

[Swordie Slayer]

Check out the Daiwa Saltist 40 or 50 and the Shimano Torium 50. Both would be great for tiles

[snafu313]

A couple of points:

All the reels suggested here are good, somewhat inexpensive reels to use. IMO, you can get away with a 4/0, but I prefer a Senator 6/0 for a beginning tilefish reel (I'm not a light tackle guy, what can I tell you..). If you go with the Senator, buy the red Senator, not the black, the red Senator has a faster retrieve. I just bought a Torium 50 and filled it with 65 lbs. braid, I'll see how that works.

Another reason in using braid for tilefish is that it has very little stretch, so that when a fish hits your line, you actually feel it. I heard somewhere that mono can have up to 30% stretch. Braid has 2-3% stretch. That might not make a lot of difference inshore, but when you have 900-1000 ft of line out, that's a different story. 50-65 lb braid is good and make sure you put about 50 ft or so of 50-60 lb mono on top, it'll make life a lot easier if you get tangled.

Just my 2 cents, I hope it's worth that much.

[Gerry Zagorski]

Good information here.... Moving a copy over to Best Of.

Thanks for the contributions guys.....