The Importance of the Fly Reel

[Brian K. Shaffer]

What a great topic! Some great replies in here as well.

Taney is definately a place to have a good drag. I can recall numerous situations where guys lose a good fish due to not having enough drag and even not having the palming ability. I fish a reel called Aaron that is long since discontinued and shows lots of wear. It is a pretty high end reel with a phenomenal disk drag system. This reel is a little heavy, so it balances my setup as Butts mentioned. It is my go to reel.. and I will never part with it. The bond will never be broken.

Butts - you looking for a new rod ? A 5 weight ? Try the TFO TiCr. I love mine. $200 or less.

I'm also one of the guys who like 99% of my fish on the reel. I like reeling in all my line for several reasons :

# 1 - your line is gonna stay cleaner / longer when its on your reel and not wrapped up in the rocks or getting accidentally stepped on

# 2 - playing the fish off the reel just feels really good.. you get to steer the fish in a little as you apply pressure from side to side with the rod as you reel.. and playing the fish as quickly as possible is important

# 3 - pulling off a little and a little more line as you increase distance while recasting is fun too.. heck.. just casting is fun!

# 4 - hearing the little reel scream/zing/sing is kind of nice too

screaming reels - Brian

[Fox Statler]

Fly Reels

http://www.willowford.net/Acid%20Test%20fo...%20Article.html

Try a $40 Granger, you will love it.

New 5 weight rod.

Dorber's new 'D Reach Ultra Weave' are going to replace Sage, Winston, Scott, and all the others. They are lighter, stronger, cast with little or no sine waves, don't breakdown during the cast, and are almost unbreakable. I am working with them to make them better.

Fox Statler

[Bill Butts]

What a great topic! Some great replies in here as well.

Butts - you looking for a new rod ? A 5 weight ? Try the TFO TiCr. I love mine. $200 or less.

screaming reels - Brian

Brian,

It was "jdavis" asking for input on rods, not me.

You will see I provided some input to him, too.

I tried to modify his quote in my reply and it came out looking like my question.

Sorry for the confusion.

I'm hope jdavis reads all the great input.

Bill Butts

[Jayhawk Chris]

I think there has been lots of good advice on here already. IMO, I generally go both ways when it comes to bring a fish in. Smaller fish, I will generally use my fingers and either thumb the line for drag or strip it in to retrieve. I can tell you however, that I have had the fortune to be hooked up with some bigger bows and browns down there and would have have never got the chance to get the photograph or more important the memory without the reel.

[Guest rwolfe]

My first question to the forum and I am floored by the quantity and quality of the responses. Thanks to everybody for your input. My thoughts are along the lines of what Jayhawk Chris stated in that I generally use my fingers for drag in retrieving smaller fish. I have used the reel a few times when I do on occasion hook up with something bigger than the norm. I have never had the thrill of hooking anything over 20" +, but have often wondered if my finger drag method would suffice in such a situation. So now that I'm sold on a decent reel with a good drag, what are your feelings on the different types of drags; spring and pawl, disc, conical and materials used with these different types of drags?

[Brian K. Shaffer]

( this topic should be moved to the fly fishing gear / review section)

- brian -

[albright3]

Try giving albright rods a try. In my opinion when you hold a albright and a winston side by side, they are both equal in quality and feel. Albright is reasonably priced too(about 365 dollars) I personally like ross reels. I too didnt think that reels were not extremely important, but like alot of other guys said it comes in handy when you have a bigger fish on. I prefer the large arbor reels and i currently have the cla1 model reel(on a 3 wt rod) Another good reel for the money is the bass pro cv2 reel.

[SilverMallard]

For your typical trout or panfish...even smallmouth bass...I don't think the reel is much of a performance factor. I use those $40 Okuma Airframes mostly. And I have zero complaints and a lot of praise since they're less than $40 each. I spend more on a fly line than I do on a reel.

Now, when I bought a serious saltwater gamefish rig, I went with a $300 reel. Tarpon, Salmon, Dorado, Steelhead...different story!