Anyone do any deep drop fishing? With grouper season opening, I be been jealous of my buddies winching up snowy grouper, Warsaw, and both kinds of tile fish. I don't have the $$$ for an electric reel so last year I tried a big spinner with braid (penn battle II 8000). It had too high to a retrieve ratio, so it barely had the torque to bring up a 2lb ball sinker from 600 feet. I've had a Senator 9/0 mounted on a Daiwa Dendoh bent butt rod for a while, but I don't want to spool a reel with that weak of drag with $100 of braid.

Today, I found a Daiwa Sealine SLD30 2 speed, aluminum frame loaded with hollow core braid on eBay for a song. It's going on the Dendoh. I took the second half of next week off and I plan on dropping it every day in about 400-800 feet. I have a chicken rig made up already, and I have about 40 more feet of 200# mono to make a few more. Just need sinkers and bait.

So what do you drop for? Swords? Cod/pollock/haddock? Halibut? Show me your fish winch!

Here it is mounted up on my Dendoh deep drop rod. I can't wait for the weekend to use it. I had to get a rod clamp so I went to Esky's Custom Rods in Key West and they beat the hell out of online pricing.

Blue line tile fish, cranked up from 600 feet

Re lined with 80 pound braid... about 800 yards. Put a 50 twist Bimini hitch to connect to a wind on leader for swordfish. I'm building a wind-on leader tomorrow.