Understand Fishing Reel Features

Video Transcript

" Hi, I’m Jim from Zoar Outdoor on behalf of expertvillage.com. In this segment we’re going to be talking about fishing gear and especially fly fishing. Here are some of the important features that you should consider when purchasing a fly reel. The first thing that you want to look at is how large the arbor is, this makes a difference in the amount of line that you can retrieve with each revolution of the spool. This is a large arbor reel which is desirable, this reel which is a fine reel is a small arbor reel, but it takes in less line with each turn of the handle. Another thing that you want to consider, and you can see the difference between these two, is this reel is a composite reel, this reel is made of stuff which doesn’t rust, doesn’t chip, doesn’t dent and doesn’t corrode. Well it might chip or dent but not much. This reel which is over 20 years old has got corrosion, this is a very fine state of the art reel at the time it was manufacturered, it’s a wonderful fly reel but you can see its pretty beat up. So the composite will avoid this corrosion problem. The other thing you want to look for in reel is an adjustable drag, what I’m doing here is I’m turning this knob and what that’s doing is tightening a mechanism inside the reel so that the line will go out with greater friction or resistance. What that’ll do is slow down a fish when it tries to swim away from you. You can adjust the drag to protect for lighter or stronger tippets on your fly line. Another feature that you want to for is changeable spools. I’ve got a sink tip line on here but supposing I wanted to use a different floating line by taking the spool off I can replace it with a floating line and like I’m doing here, take that line off and put it on, so interchangeable spools is a really good feature to have as well. Also when we talk about protection, a good neoprene pouch to protect your reel when you’re not using it, it’s a wonderful thing. You can keep your spare spool inside the neoprene pouch, and it fits in a pocket or in your fishing vest or in your fanny pack, so this is a great thing to have along. So my recommendation to you is a single action reel with multiple spools, a good drag system and made of a composite material. There are several manufacturers that make this, this one happens to be a 2007 model of a Redington Cross Water. It’s available in a large size for 7, 8, 9 weight lines and in a medium size for 4, 5 and 6, it’ll hold about 200 yards of backing plus the fly line, it’s a good choice."