[Naturalmystic]

I just picked up a nice Penn 49 off ebay and want to wire it up. The question I have is what would you recommend as a good backing- what pound test? I was going to go with 40-50lb test but wanted to make sure it wasn't over kill. Thanks!

 

[Leprechaun]

A subject near to my heart. I've use a pair of 49s for over 20 years for WL fishing. Though not int he past 5 seasons, though. Its tough to get crew these days that doesn't mind cranking in 400 ft of wire 25 times per trip.

Anyway, my 49s were among the first with the aluminum spools, which does not work out very well with wire, over the long term. The anodizing and then the aluminum of the spool itself will react with the wet wire, pitting the spool and wrecking the line.

What to do is to either source an old-time chrome on brass spool for your reel (if it does have the aluminum spool), or to paint your spool with two coats of Rustoleum paint, letting it dry one week between coats.

I like 50 Dacron for backing, then a Spro 130lb swivel, then the wire line. The leader goes to the wire with the same Spro swivel.

You can mark the line in several ways, including telephone bell wire wrapped around youy line at the intervals you choose.

best, Lep

 

[Hunt n' Fish]

marking wire

My father had a couple of old Penn reels that had double dogs so that you could crank it in either direction. I have a feeling that is the same reel as you guys are describing. He had the wire marked every hundred feet with a swivel and would guess the 50' in between. On a boat I worked on that used wire line to chunk, we'd get a lot of tangles in the end of the wire where the bait was. We initially ran the wire, then albrighted a 10', 100# leader and then a barrel swivel, and then a 3' leader to the hook. Remembering my father's old techniques, we changed out the wire rigs to use a Spro wind-on swivel as the first 100' mark. The rest of the wire was marked every 50' with colored phone wire. At the end of the wire was another Spro windon, then the heavy leader, then another barrel swivel, then the leader to the hook. We went from on swivel in the set up, to three high quality swivels and just about eliminated all the twists. And if there ever was any problems with the wire, it would have occured in the first 100' which could easily be changed out at the swivel.

Worked like a charm.

Chris

 

[Rodwinder]

Lep, Chris, how did you guys secure the phone wire so it did not move from its original mark

 

[Hunt n' Fish]

Ralphie,

I watched Shep at J&H do it a number of times. He would take a piece of phone wire a few inches long, maybe 5 or 6 inches, lay it next to the wire and just start hay wire twisting it on. Then finish the ends off with 4 or 5 barrel wraps and break off the tag ends.

 

[clementine]

Hunt n' Fish wrote:
Ralphie,

I watched Shep at J&H do it a number of times. He would take a piece of phone wire a few inches long, maybe 5 or 6 inches, lay it next to the wire and just start hay wire twisting it on. Then finish the ends off with 4 or 5 barrel wraps and break off the tag ends.
I've seen shep do it a few times as well, definitely an art. I think the key to preventing the marks from sliding is to twist both the monel and the telephone wire together like a haywire, and then do some barrel wraps. on each end.

 

[SieraSky]

Penn 49

I have three of these old guys I still use for trolling. I switched from wire to lead-core. I use a T-Man keel & egg sinker to get me down to the depth I need. I'm pretty sure they have the double dog lever to be able to crank out line. All mine have chrome spools and haven't had any problems. The nice thing about lead-core is it's marked every 40 ft. approx. Good luck with the reel it's an old workhorse.

 

[Savvy18]

Ahh, I remember the days when I used to go wire-line trolling with my friend John who was really good at it. That was many moons ago. Have not done that type of fishing for bass in 10 years or so...

Like Lep said, it's tough to find anyone that wants to do all that work anymore. I admit that I am one of them. It was more that the gear was "usually" overpowering the fish that made me go away from that style of bass fishing. I mean, we would average 10-20 lb. fish and it was just not worth it to me anymore. I would rather catch those fish on light tackle and get more enjoyment out of every fish than hoping for a cow to show up...

With the innovation of lighter rods, lighter and better reels, improved lines and different methods, the wire-line idea got old and almost seemed to me to be "unfair" to the fish we were catching...

Obviously, there are still guys out there that do it and that is cool. I think I put that method away and it will stay in the past.

This post edited by Savvy18 12:30 AM 09/04/2008