Review of Fin-Nor AHAB 20

[CAP]

I was talked into this reel by the staff at Bass Pro, earlier today. The reel is a little heavy but cetainly feels solid. I figured with the Mega Drag feature it would stand head and shoulder above the other Fin-nor offshore spinning reels. However, there are couple of things about this reel that you should know before you purchase the reel.

1. Paper is sparce in the box with no good explanation of features (or how to use them)

2. The spool comes off "ala accurate" while the drag stays on the reel

3. The drag is silky smooth between 2-11 pounds, but to generate higher tension you almost have to take the spool off the reel to get a good grip on the drag nob to finish tighening.

4. The drag curve is a little werid with slow gradual increase until about 11 pounds. Then you have to realy crank on the knob and the drag jumps up to 18 lb with less than half a rotation of the knob. At this point to drag is still smooth but it is almost impossible to get the reel to pull between 11 and 18.

5. The bail arm (the single most stressed part of the reel after the stem) is graphite and flexes with the heavy drag setting.

The reel would work well for up to 30 lb test (like the box describes), but I was hoping for a reel to bump up a few line class to fish 50-65 lb spectra. Unfortunately the design of the reel and the drag system does not fit with this niche. I will take it back and will try the Cabo PT 80.

-CP

[Spinning Reel]

Thank you for the review. In the end seems like the Fin-Nor Off-Shore are a better choice.

If you want to try a not so expensive reel with dual drag, high density gears and all metal construction you can get the new Okuma Salina.

The size 40 max drag is over 30lbs and the size 80 is over 60lbs ().

I had the CABO PT40, same drag curve as the one you describe, don't know about the CABO PT80 though.