Wow upper limit (60) lower limit (20) divided by 8 is only 10lbs of drag. So it’s basically a 30lb rod!! It does seem a bit light.. I Fish 50-60lb leaders, and push the drags up to 20lbs at times for stopping power.... perhaps the phenix are rated a bit different.. I’ve used a calstar 700mh 30-60 and it was perfect. We will see i haven’t put the balls to it yet. Maybe someone will trade a XH or a 2XH
Well yea, think about it logically, the rod isn't rated for only 60#, it's rated for 20-60#. How could one rod possibly fish 60# on the high end of the drag range and still remotely make sense to use for 20#? The rod has a singular sweet spot, you can fish higher on the rating range if you want to fish with light drag or stay lower in the range if you like to fish with heavy drag relative to the line test. You want to fish heavy for the line test so it should be pretty obvious you don't want the softest rod that has 60# in the rating range. Ask the long rangers if they'd fish 100# with 30# of drag on their 40-100# sticks.
I fish the 20-50 PSW869H with about 8#s of drag, and it's pretty great for 30#/light jig, but fishing 10#s for 40# line doesn't instill confidence. The shorter rods are a bit stouter for the same H rating, and their 20-60 line rating reflects that, so 10#s of drag sounds about right. In general I find Calstars can absolutely fish one line class higher than the Black Diamonds and potentially pushed one class above that, while the Hybrids can just be pushed one line class higher than the PSWs, but not always comfortably if you like to fish heavy. For below XH ratings I prefer the PSWs because I feel they absorb runs better being softer and I have more confidence the fish isn't going to come unpinned bc I tend to get really paranoid that it's going to happen.