Wow. Glad everyone is safe.   

We were up at Russian Gulch at the time.  That ocean was no joke.

Good luck out there.

By the way, where do you get wave energy info?  Thanks!

I do this yearly to all my reels:

1.  Spool bearings get carb cleaned, dried, and lubed with TSI oil.  2. Main bearings get carb cleaned, dried, and fully packed with Yamaha marine grease.  3. Entire interior and parts get coated with a thin layer of Yammy marine grease.  4. Screw holes dabbed with grease before insertion. 5. Drag washers upgraded to carbontex then Cal's drag grease.  (ARB bearings get just a bit of TSI oil)

I do all the above for most brand new reels even before any use since most of the mfg do a crummy job of initial protection of bearings and internal parts.

There's much difference of opinion about rinsing after each use.  I just give a quick and gentle rinse to get the salt off the exterior.

I never ever skip yearly maintenance.  If friends want to bring their own gear on my boat, it has to be regularly serviced or we don't use it.

It's just salmon so any and all of these reels would far more than adequate.

There may be other considerations.  Do you do your own reel maintenance?  Do you want a reel that is less prone to salt water incursion right out of the box?  Or will you grease bearings when the reel is brand new?  Are you comfortable risking expensive equipment to loss or does your frugality say stick with the inexpensive gear just in case it goes bye-bye?  Will your gear be used for other fishing, like rockfish?  Some reel designs are great right out of the box but may have issues later such as worn dogs or corroded antireverse bearings.

You might want to investigate these things to help you make your selection.  Seems like a lot of opinions tend to center on how a reel performs during fishing.  All of these reels do well for salmon, the real differences are in the other things.

Thanks for the report and congrats on the nice fish!  That drag sounds really wonky; I’d be happy to fix it for ya for free.
Cheers,
John

I no longer visit NCUH because I keep getting this message-


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Threadjack over.  Very nice video.  Thanks for sharing!
JM

I hope everybody is safe.

We were fishing on a pb outside Bodega Head when we heard the mayday on the vhf and then intermittent parts of communications between a yakker at Ft Ross and presumably other boaters who were closer to the area.  But all this was on channel __, not on 16.  I'm not sure exactly which channel because my skipper today was switching around.

Anyway, remember to use channel 16 for emergency hailing.  The US Coast Guard has the equipment to hear from and to broadcast to VHF a loooong way.