How hard can you lean into a fish on your gear?

[MuskieBait]

Definitely.

A lot of time, I notice two groups of anglers...

1) Those who use heavy drag, heavy line and simply heave into their fish.

2) Those who are not familiar with their gear and play a fish too gentle even though their gear can be put to more stress.

That's a sign that most anglers are not familiar with the limits of their gear.

A way I like to test my gear is simply put on a light leader and try to test out the drag, the rod's action and the line strength.

For example, I put on 6lb fluorocarbon as a leader when I use 8lb mainline on my float rod. When you hooked a salmon, you can adjust the drag to a little more, or a little less, to see when you can safely slow or stop a fish. Then, using the same drag setting, you can test the rod for its bend. You'll notice that when you load the rod up, the drag may not pay out as easily. The potential energy in the rod's bend puts more pressure on the fish and when the rod is loaded up, line puts pressure on the rod guides as well, making your drag a little less responsive.

Just make sure that your leader is always lighter than the mainline and well within or below your rod's rating. You want the leader to snap first before your mainline or your rod...in case you put too much pressure on the fish and the drag on the reel can't react quickly enough.

You can use the "Rules of thirds" usually. Your max drag on the reel should be no more than 1/3 of your line breaking strength (mainline or leader). With freshwater fishing, you hardly ever even need 5lb of drag. If you're line is 8lb test, you don't want to set your drag to be more than 3lbs. The drag setting is always lower since you have to account for the rod's power when the blank loads up.