| by Dave Rae
“Buy the best quality gear you can afford and look after it”. That’s as simple and as complex as it gets with all mechanical equipment; and it fits oh so well with fishing gear.
Five years ago I bit the bullet and purchased a 3500HD Certate and loaded it with 15kg braid that is usually fished to the limit. Up north, when fishing the GBR the 15kg braid is replaced with 24kg line and again the drag is screwed down… and after as much abuse as I can get the HD into, it’s still in A1 condition…and I love that!
A huge cobia that stayed just out of gaff range for 30 minutes, a couple of 15kg plus northern Bluefin that must have heated up the drag, a big Spaniard, metre-long Barra, a 17kg mulloway and 10 minutes of acrobatic black marlin and are the more glamorous captures. Add to that 100’s snapper, half a hundred coral trout and heaps of red-throat and I reckon it’s safe to say that the HD Certate is a gem of a reel. In all that I think I’ve replaced two roller bearings and put a couple of doses of machine oil into the rest.
If it’s a smooth dragged reel that can cop the beatings dished out by us average anglers, the HD Certate is just the ticket. Check them out at your nearest tackle store!
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