Setting the Drag in Fly Fishing

Video Transcript

"Ok, there's a few things about the reel you need to know. One is the drag. Usually you want to set this drag just tight enough so that when you grab the line and give it a nice jerk, you don't get a backlash. You set it too much tighter than that and you have the problem of breaking the fish off. The fish has to pull hard enough to pull that line off the reel. If you set it too loose, then you have the opposite problem where the fish grabs your line and takes off and you get a backlash and now you've got a knotted up mess in your line, which is not good. So, that's basically what you want to do with the reel drag is just set it tight enough that you can give it a good tug without having a backlash."