hey captain Chris Meyer Central Florida site fishing charters if you're using conventional spinning or fly tackle for your fishing most of us are going to have a drag on our reel to keep big fish from breaking our line and it's important that you have that drag set correctly now what I do is ensure saltwater flats fish and I use spinning tackle and fly tackle and the drags on my reels are located right here on the top for my spinning reels there's a little knob right here you twist this and it tightens or loosens the drags some other spinning reels have your drag located down here in the bottom conventional reels can have them on the side fly reels usually have a little knob on the side kind of similar than that that tightens it up but to keep yourself from breaking fit fish off you're going to need to set your drag properly and when you first start doing it it's probably better off for you to use a scale so you're going to need a helper if you have a scale like a fish weighing scale have someone tie the line on to the scale then you can pull up put a bend in your rod pull up on it and when the drag when the line starts coming off the reel we begin to hear that click get the reading off of that scale in general you want 20% of your lines breaking strength so if I'm using 10 pound braid which is what this is I'd want my drags at about 2 pounds so you're really not going to break off a giant fish if you're have your drag set properly so I could catch a 40-pound fish on this 10 pound line and at 2 pounds of pressure it's going to start coming off the spool after a while you can just do it by feel after you set it a few times then you'll be able to just pull up on it so that's too loose give it a couple clicks you can get it where you can feel it comes off just right but it's much better off when you first starting to do it using the scale now during the fight I always have some extra drag that I can stick on my reel at any time and I'm not going to do that I turn them this because you turn that too much it's locked in there and if you got it down too tight you're going to break yourself off here's my extra drag right here here's where I put my extra drag right there on the spool I can put one finger on there I can put two fingers on there if you need to you could grab that whole spool but instantly if I feel that fish surging I can let it go so if I have my drag set rather late and I usually set my drag you know no more than two three pounds max I can add ten pounds of drag if I want and totally grab it the school will not turn at all but as I'm fighting bigger fish as I pull up I can just barely palm it's called palming that spool touch it lightly with my hand if the fish surgeon is I get my fingers out of the way I like feel them take off and get right down on it crank them back up let go if I need to so that's how you can put some extra drag on but make sure your drag is set properly get a scale set it about 20% 25% then you can get a feel pull them off with your hand see what that feels like and pretty soon you'll be able to set them up without ever using the scale and you won't break any fish off