If this looks familiar that’s because this is big brother to a reel featured last issue. In the hand, this has strong family ties, smooth surfaces, heavily ported spool and body. Obviously this is a bigger reel, can hold more line, but the big differences are more than size.

The CCF Nautilus uses a ‘captive nut’ to attach spool to body. To separate the parts slacken the big black nut in the centre of the spool: easier than it sounds, the shaped corners on the nut look nice but don’t really give me much to grip. The great plus points for this method of linking spools and body are the nut can’t fall off the spool and there is little or no ‘play’ when the spool is attached. This spool really feels like it seat accurately in place and I can find no play whatsoever.

Turn the spool and it purrs on the way out, silent on the way in. As with the smaller lighter Nautilus reel I like the feel of this drag knob, nicely machined and finished and easy to get hold of. With the drag ‘off’ the spool spins free on the way in and the purring check limits my ability to over-run when the drag is set low. Then tighten up the drag. I really appreciate that Nautilus set this up so it’s a long way, a lot of turning, from minimum to maximum drag. That lets me set a drag precisely, things are not black and white, the drag doesn't dramatically change if I'm daft enough or desperate enough to try and change settings while playing a fast running fish.

Then inside. If the drag on the Nautilus FWX looked big enough, this just looks big. The red and black drag housing is clearly a sealed unit, Nautilus blurb tells me they use carbon and cork friction surfaces to provide the drag. The end result feels smooth, the drag unit looks robust and I imagine all that metal acts as a heat-sink helping dissipate heat and prevent the drag tightening under pressure. I can only image since, sadly, no fish in this part of the world will get this reel warm enough to breaking sweat let alone hot enough to need a heat-sink.

The line capacity means I could use this for salmon fishing; it will house a Spey line with backing. Then the finesse of the drag comes into its own. Just set what's needed and listen for the purring check when a fish draws line. Or I could use this for tarpon, which is really what this was specified for; fill the spool with a WF12 line and 350 yards of backing. Then the power of the drag comes into play, so your next tarpon guide can tighten it to the point where you can just barely pull line from the spool and a good sized tarpon will test the stopping power, smoothness and heat dissipation of that drag unit.

As a salmon reel this is over-specified, but the drag has the finesse to make it a fine salmon reel, at 12.4oz this is a big heavy reel whether or not that suits a 15ft rod is a personal choice. As a big-game saltwater reel this has the credentials and build quality I want for big fast fish. Lovely.