Wow! Way to commit on the gear! You'll get them in 2026.
Pretty good year down here in San Diego. The size I like (<100#) were close most of the year around the Coronado Islands and out to about 30 mi. Just had to find the bait on the temp breaks.
You should add the San Diego Jam knot to your arsenal. Fairly easy to tie and works great for most every application, even up to 200# flouro.
Thanks again for the info!
Take care.
I've tied the San Diego Jam, it's a big clump. I think it is a good knot (see below) but I'm not a fan.
I might hit you up to come down there and fish with you if you are open to that idea, you seem pretty chill.
On knots, here is the deal. I've been trying for tuna on my boat for a couple of years. I have had my gear come apart as soon as I put the madmac in the water, twice. So now I test all my stuff, not my actual gear because I don't want to stress that, but I make up a rig. If you are like my mentor, you take the single hooks off the back of the madmacs and you put on those crazy expensive trebles, if anyone doesn't know what those are, ask, I'll go look them up. I think they are $9 each or something crazy like that. But the guy that mentors me does that and I have learned to resist what he does at my own peril.
So I have all these single hooks from the Madmacs and they are very good quality hooks. I use them to test things, I'll do crimps on one hook, Palomar on another, I've got a bow shooting scale that goes to 100 pounds of pull, and I'll go put at least 60 pounds of pressure on the test setup. I should stop saying mentor, he is Jens Meyerhoff, Jens asked me why I was putting so much pressure on the test setup. He asked because he believes that 30-35 pounds of drag is the absolute most drag you should ever do. And he is correct, I'd challenge the most fit amongst you to take stout tuna rod and try and make the reel sing with 30 pounds of drag with the rod at a 90 degree to the line. You can't. It will pull you out of the boat. 30 pounds of drag is a shit ton.
I told Jens I test to 60 pounds, which I do without a rod, I'm just pulling on the reel and leaning my 200 pound body backwards, because my pull is static. The bluefin are way more dynamic, they are doing head shakes, I'm not doing that with the reel, they are doing runs, it's different. And I told Jens that my shit has fallen apart twice. I want to be sure.
So I test to 60 pounds.
I have tested a lot of knots. A popular knot down south is the RP, it has other names, you loop the mono and wrap around the loop and end up going through the loop with the braid. All the boats down south use this knot. I hate this knot because if you pull on it hard enough the braid cuts the mono loop, cuts right through it. I get it, you have to pull pretty close to the line strength, I did this with 80 pound braid and 130 mono, and it cut through at about 78 pounds but it cut through. It's a fine knot, easy to tie on a boat moving around, I would absolutely use it for halibut, salmon, all the stuff other than bluefin in northern california. I won't use it for bluefin.
I flirted with the springer knot. I still like this knot a lot for things that are lighter than bluefin and Jens encouraged me to test it to see how much it slips. He doesn't like it because has had it come undone on him. The guy on youtube who made this knot popular watched someone fight a bluefin for maybe 12 hours and the knot held. I use it for everything except bluefin because I've tested it, marked it with a sharpy and it slips. I think it stops slipping but I'm not sure.
The Palomar just works. Very simple knot, you make a loop, do an overhand with that loop through the eye, then pass the lure through the loop and tighten up.
The trick is, just like the springer, you want the two strands to lay next to each other, if they cross over each other they cut each off under pressure. The palomar is harder to tie but there is a trick, you stick your finger in the part that you are trying to cinch down, the part that you want to not cross over, and you can sort it out on your finger just fine. That knot never breaks, and all this ramble later, it's more compact than the san diego jam.
The east coast guy that sold me my seekers, good to 200-300 pounds, he said these rods are just not good enough for our 500-1000 pound tuna, I asked him what he did and he said "Palomar to 200 pound, crimps after that". Yep, agree.