Has anyone had experience with either? If so, I would appreciate comments. I heard Okuma has improved their QC especially on their newer line.

holoholo

Hey There...

I'll give you my input but I want you to know that I work for Okuma. The TG reels have been out for about 6 years now. Over the last few years we have added new technology to those reels that have made them a good reel at a good value. The TG-10S is a reel that I use when we go to the East Cape. When we were testing the TG-10S, I was first up and baited about a 130 pound Striped Marlin. From hookset to leader it took me 3 minutes. I was basically tryiong to break the reel straight winding the fish to the boat with braided line. I still use that prototype today and it probaly has a dozen yuna up to 70 pounds on it along with about 4 Marlin.

One thing that we did to show our confidence in the reels now was add a 5 year warranty to them. If you have any troubles with them, we are going to take care of it. recently we have added a carbon based drag washer that not only made the drag smoother, it also disipates heat better so the drags won't glaze when a big fish takes a lot of line.

As far as Okuma's QC... We have three checkpoints on the QC line so that has been stepped up in the last two years. More than just our QC, we have added engineers from Germany and Korea to go along with our engineers in Taiwan, China and the U.S. We are more focused than ever with our product and technology improves every day.

Let me know if you have any other specific questions about the product.

Mark Rogers

Mark, thanks for the response. I was in a tackle shop today to visually check out the TG and they had a 10S there. I noticed that the lever drag was loose even after tightening it down. You could actually hear it rattle when winding the reel...is this normal? With the exception of this, the reel looked and felt smooth.

holoholo

With the way the cam is designed... there is some movement. This doesn't affect the function of the drag system and was designed so you can't crack the cam when using heavy drag pressure. Some other lever drags systems will allow damage to the cam if too much pressure is applied. Let me kmow if you have any other questions by contacting me at mark@okumafishing.com.

Thanks.