Reel Common Sense

With the holiday season approaching like a runaway train, a great many fishing reels will be pondered over as gift ideas. In a few locally-owned tackle stores, you can still get reel advice from patient salesmen with knowledge of coastal fishing. That's rare in the big box chain stores, where technical fishing questions, these days, are mostly met with blank stares. That's why many fishing reels are returned after Christmas, exchanged for something more practical. Or worse, they're used for years where they shouldn't be. Some of it Mickey Mouse tackle, wrongly used where big fish prowl.

I can offer a few truths on fishing reels that might save money, or even anguish over a broken line on the water.

For instance, a push-button spin reel has no place at the jetties or offshore, but does have applications for younger anglers on low piers or seawalls. Many of my initial, desperate battles with redfish in Sabine Lake, as a teenager, happened with a Zebco 404, and I usually prevailed.

And the bigger level-winds like the Penn 309 we lugged onto the party boats, with a worm gear that spreads line evenly, will actually cast a little ways and isn't too bad for bottom fishing. However, they're terrible for fast fish... such as kings, tarpon and anything else that can light a fire under its tail. For that you need a reel without the worm gear like the sturdy Penn 4/0, the go-to favorite reel among offshore charter boat captains. For more consistent work with speedy gamesters, consider upgrading to lever-drag reels instead of older star-drag models. The Shimano TLD-15, 20 and 25 came out in the late 1980s, have caught many world records, and are still found in the stores. And in my tackle room, for that matter.

For the serious inshore coastal fishermen, there are too many reel options to count. Forty years and a lifetime ago when times were more simple, you fished with the venerable red reel in Texas waters, and maybe saw a few spin outfits like the Mitchell 300mostly in far South Texas where the wind howled and long casts, sometimes upwind, were required. Further up the coast, spin gear was regarded with suspicion. Which to use?

I was trained young while visiting a great uncle in South Florida, and my relatives there carried both spin and baitcasters; whatever was close at hand. During the course of the day you picked up one model (Ambassador 5000-A) or the other (Mitchell 300). To this day, my right-hand is trained for a baitcaster reel, and my left for spin. Switching is incredibly awkward. Thirty years came and went, and then someone give me a mint-condition pair of Ambassadeur 5500 and 6000 reels, both left-handed, and I couldn't do a thing with them.

I suspect you have to train anglers fairly young, to make them ambidextrous with reels. The earlier an angler begins reeling, the more efficient they become... economy of motion later in life, if you will. There is lots of awkward reeling going on in public places like the piers, mostly by people fairly new to the sport. As opposed to sun-darkened pier rats, who catch most of the bigger fish. Today, anyone using spin gear with a hand preference simply unscrews the handle and sticks it on his favorite side. Hand motion with spin is certainly wider and looser, compared with a baitcaster reel, but it has to be ingrained to become efficient.

Baitcasting gear is far more accurate when casting around small targets, like trees in a lake. We fell right into that, so to speak, growing up on Sam Rayburn and Toledo Bend lakes when they were covered in thick trees, and we each had our red reel with a few lures. Accuracy was everything, back in the brush. And the ability to horse a hooked fish from behind a tree, or 20 feet down while doodle-socking in an ironwood tree. Today Texas reservoirs are pretty much inland seas without timber, unless they flood into the shorelines, so perhaps spin gear has more application there. If you travel to Brazil or Venezuela for peacock bass, or Honduras for snook, casting around flooded trees with accuracy is paramount. For those venues, leave spin gear at home.

As for accuracy, I'm not sure if a casting competition has ever been won with spin gear, when smallish targets such as floating hula-hoops are targeted at close or medium range. Ive been lucky enough to win that contest with borrowed baitcasting gear at a state writers conference, though some will claim (not without accuracy) that the competition may have been light. Another time at a national conference, I won the long distance competition with borrowed spin gear. You had to fling a bare jighead out beyond 100 feet and land it in an alley as narrow as a bowling lane. Whip it out there, like the target was a white hole on the Laguna Madre, and way upwind. Yankees all around me whispered and scratched their heads.

Enough on esoterics. Lets break reel advice down to regions and venues, for simplification.

Surf fishing is wide-open, without obstructions. For waders, that means lighter line will suffice, insuring more enjoyable battles. Its been said that while wading in fine surroundings, one good trout or redfish is worth three from a boat, and I believe it. In the surf, stick with 12-pound line on either baitcast or spin tackle, but remember that the fish may be 40 yards away, usually upwind. Since I can hardly pick a backlash from today's small, modern baitcaster reels, I stick with spin. It is, after all, hard to wear dry cheater glasses, waist-deep in the surf. Braid line? Forget it; I don't need those inscrutable tangles. You can count on your reel getting soaked; you need durability and the ability to take it apart and clean it. Avoid sanding the reel, too.

For anglers parked on the beach, you need distance, and that means long rods and big spin reels, for the most part. The pros who air-deliver baits (whether tiny pompano baits or mullet heads for bull redfish) use big-capacity spin reels with rods of 12 feet or longer. They know the action may be 200 feet offshore. Their spin reels are kept above salt and sand in hollow PVC spikes, hammered thoroughly into the sand.

Jetty fishing from a boat is drier, but those granite rocks are crusty with barnacles and even scattered oysters. That means using heavier line; if a redfish or sheepshead brushes a rock, a hard line may survive. An errant cast onto the rocks wont come up limp, either. Since we anchored close or walked the rocks, we didn't have to cast far, so we always used baitcaster reels with tough 20-pound Ande line. In calm conditions a jetty rat friend of mine would try spin tackle on occasion, but it never really caught on. One touch by a mackerel or rock, and another precious spoon or plug was gone. Our red reels were easily taken apart and cleaned of salt, and lasted through one hard summer after another. If a sow trout grabbed on, that 20-pound line was solid insurance. If a big jackfish attacked, there was at least a small chance you would get the lure back, a half-hour later if you followed with the boat.

Bay fishing is wide-open and again, 12-pound line should suffice. Except for occasional jackfish, anything big enough to strip a reel in the bay would be rare. In rocky Baffin Bay with the states biggest trout, 15-pound line would be more advisable, especially if that trout of a lifetime comes calling. In the bays, stick with what you know best, whether baitcast or spin. Keep in mind that the further south you fish, the more wind you can expect. And the Texas coast is a windy place. I've had enough backlash-picking for a lifetime, and would stick with spin gear. Even during a long wade on a protected, comfortable shoreline, I now have little patience for picking out a rats nest... and I've picked out some big ones.

Platform fishing offshore means sticking with baitcaster reels. Gulf rig pilings are more thickly coated with marine growth than any jetty rock, and there are powerful species of fish here that are quick to dive into structure – notably snapper, ling and tripletail. Hook one near a rig leg, and you've got to get mean with him, and right now. Spin gear wont cut the mustard. If you want to cast for mackerel away from the platform, that's okay, since they never run through structure. But for general casting around rig pilings, baitcaster reels prevail. If you're adventurous enough to climb a platform and fight fish, don't even think about using standard spin gear, its almost useless. Unless you've got a bigger spin reel filled with 65-pound Suffix braid line, like I did last summer. You can get mean with that stuff, fighting 26-inch redfish in tight confines, lifting them 12 feet to the deck above.

Inlet fishing with current requires slightly heavier tackle. Anchored in the boat or fishing from the rocks, in typical depths of 15 to 30 feet, a sizeable fish here maybe three or four feet long will run you ragged with trout tackle. Bump up to 30- to 40-pound line and you're all over these fish, mostly bull redfish, big black drum, jacks, blacktip sharks, and the occasional tarpon. With a baitcaster reel, you can get fairly mean with this class of line, even if a current is running. With spin gear, however, it becomes a chore. In October we ran into a dozen black drum weighing 25 to 30-pounds, and had some fun with 25-pound spin tackle, and even the trout spin rods. However, on the last trip the current was noticeably stronger, and it became a chore lasting too long, even with the bigger rods. Mr. Drum turned sideways out there, using the current to his advantage. After a while it was like: dammit, come here you, you're supposed to be in the boat by now

You can match your tackle correctly, until Nature throws a joker on the table.