Do You Need An Expensive Fly Reel? (Fly Fishing)

[Music] foreign welcome back today we're revisiting reels we shot this video years and years ago not A lot's changed really but I wanted to go over just a few of the basics about reels and how you may match them uh price and stuff we just shot a video about the thousand dollar Rod got a few people's panties in a wad over that one boy we never said that the thousand dollar Rod was not wasn't good we just said he'd get another real or run that's virtually as good for less money and I'm going to go through that with these two uh but this one might surprise you because reels aren't that expensive compared to fly rods and I'm going to walk you through a bunch of these things and I'm going to tell you what I like in a reel so when I go over what when I talk about what I do fishing is not from somebody that fishes 10 times a year I mean uh a lot of time on the water and the one thing I've never designed is a reel and I'm going to go through a couple of points that I would like to see in reels but I'm basically just want you to understand what you're paying for and uh what you get for your money really and so I have this reel I just got today A friend of mine George brought it to me this is a three eight three and an eight unique hearty pre-war 100 year old reel this reel's still going right this thing is I just love this thing I can't wait to match it up I fish and it has no drag and you know drag systems on reels are relatively real drags are relatively new to our world when I started fishing in the 70s you know a lot if you had a hearty you were somebody I mean that was like the Hallmark of all reels and they were pretty expensive 150 you know 200 bucks maybe even back then and but they were no drag they have a click paw which simply click pause just stopped The Reel from going backwards this is actually a right hand so it just stops that Rio from going backwards any over spooling right and as a trout and this is about Trope don't any saltwater cats call me up and look text me or whatever and tell me that well in the salt water you gotta have this I know it's a different thing and so we're talking trout reels here and so when I go through this there's a couple things that we end up here on some of the higher priced reels and I want you to understand what the function of the Reel is first and foremost it's got to balance your Rod so I've got different size reels here you have to figure that out you got to make sure the Reel is balanced so it's a I personally like a reel it's a little heavier I like the weight in my wrist and it Smooths my cast up and but that's that's kind of basic you'd have to go to a you know to a shop and have somebody say well I got this Rod I want to match it that and then you start getting into the actual function of the Reel so when you get into that there's a couple things that have changed over the years one it used to be people are really concerned with backing capacity that is such a crock of crap I mean in 40 well more than that in 50 plus years of 55 closing 60 almost years of fishing and a lot of trophy fishing I have seen backing so few times in my life it's ridiculous including Lake fish over 15 20 pounds they just really seldom get out into your backing so this whole capacity thing should go out the window if you get a fish into your backing it's probably ass-hooked and you snagged it and it's Downstream and it's not coming home off it goes so most the time your fish are going to be within your fly line which is 100 feet right so that's a thing that kinda has gone by the wayside people realize they don't need that much backing uh even I mean even for big fish it's it's really rare I know it happens somebody's going to comment that they're the greatest in the world and they they hit backing all the time ass-hooked fish that's what I'm telling you but back to the reels so I'm starting with the cheapest reel and I'm going to go through this and much like I did a thing about the Traverse the echo Traverse this is an echo base this reel is 45 I fished it for two seasons I particularly like that aspect and I always fish this on my Lake reel rods and you know the fish on the lake bigger faster thankfully sometimes Dumber uh you catch a lot of fish right and I really like to be able to pick up line in a hurry when you look at that reel and you see it free spooling fish is running at you and it's coming wide open I like to be able to pant just a fan as fast as I can right and it picks up lime because the fish is coming at me and the rivers it's not usually as big a deal but this is a Korean reel it's fifty dollars right around there 45 50 bucks and what you're going to see is reels are going like 50 to 100 jumps until you hit the American mate we'll get to that in a second so you got a 45 50 reel then you got the Redington zero again again this is a Korean reel cast reel a lot of these reels are cast and then machined we'll get to that in a second but again click paw reel not a lot to it it won't overspin when you hear those things if you're ever curious because I was playing with this unique one you can hear this noise it changes it gets a lower decimal kind of a little deeper throaty sound that tells you that you're going against the drag this way louder that's your drag side that's your clicker that's just a little bit more resistant so your line doesn't overspool personally I don't care about drags at all with a trout reel I think the most overrated thing in the world but for trout but I want one that's smooth I mean that's the critical thing I don't care about how much weight I just don't want the reel to overspin when it's when the fish stops and the Reel keeps spitting line out you're in deep you're in trouble so okay here we go we got a 50 we got a hundred now we're going to step into one of my personal favorite reels ever made this is a Lampson this is a liquid and it comes this is the best value I think in the business 270 you get two spools 150 you can buy The Reel but if you buy the Reel you get two extra spools a little bag I just think it's a great value and it's American made and I want to show you something about virtually once we step out of those click pause I want you to see that there's one thing that's unique to almost every one of these reels there's a one-way bearing in here that's about the only thing come back to me that's about the only thing that can go wrong if you don't lose it that's the only thing that can go wrong with a reel anymore is that bearing and they're pretty Universal and they replace them in a hurry but this thing is going to kill me all right we'll put that aside don't do that on the river but that reel to me is the best value in the business because you get two extra spools right but then you start so we just jumped and we and I have one here out of order and we went from 50 100 150 50 or 270 around there for the extra spools and then this is the Hardy this reel it's the uh the disc reel I absolutely love this reel but this is a hearty but it's built in Korea comes in at about 375. and again it's it's a completely machined reel at this point everything's CNC the tolerance is on the reels nowadays are so incredible and I mean again even back to that cheapest 50 reel and this is where I would say that's a good entry level reel entry level meaning you might upgrade it you might not if the real I fished that thing for two years without anything going wrong with it right finally one of the bearings went bad on it just that one way that and I had to replace it but it was still I got two years out of it when you step into these reels you start looking at really fine Machinery this is the Hardy uh this reel is curry and made and it's at 375 and now is when we're going to start seeing the jumps right so you get this is the high end of the Korean reels the thing I love about this reel I said earlier if I could design reels I've been trying to get somebody to let me build one forever tall and skinny that is really critical to me if the Reel is tall and skinny it means that Arbor is very large that means I get a lot of pickup every time I do that I'm going to get about eight inches maybe more of pickup but I didn't check this one I'm guessing it's 8 to 10 inches per Revolution which is a lot of pickup when you look at the old school reels like this isn't really but like this one here this Uniqua it would be each one might be three to four inches of retrieve so I'm tripling that just by retrieving right I like that you also get when you get a bigger Arbor like that your line comes off your reel very smoothly it's much smoother than it is in the old days when the line when the reels were shorter fatter and it kind of would stack your line inside and it come off the Reel and you could feel it kind of thumping right and that's not good I mean that starts putting uneven tension rods start going up and down stuff like that now we're back into the the American-made reels and I talked about this on the thousand dollar rod thing and I never said they weren't great rods I just said that they were overpriced they were 800 I probably wouldn't be so pissed but the reels I don't really think even when you get into the high dollar ones like about this lamps in here I mean this uh Nautilus when you get into the American-made reels you're paying for American mate and you're paying for machinery and stuff like that and the difference between that paying more for the real than the rod is that this rail is 100 years old most of the Rails that I fish personally are at least a lot of them are you know 40 years old they fish a lot of older Hardies a fish hell that fish medalist some of those even but when I fish for for the bigger fish when I do other things when I put when I'm putting a system together I usually want to see an American-made reel I like what I get for my money so on to this Lampson this is the light speed now you're going to get into something that's more like 500 and what you're going to pay for is the American made you're gonna pay for the fit and finish and you're going to have a lot of details that you can pay for so here I'm just going to go through these three and kind of come back to that point so here we've got the American made everything's machined everything's out of a solid cast you know they everything I said earlier it's all CNC these tolerances are ridiculously clean all right then you get into this Ross this is the evolutionary I love these reels fetched evolutions for a long time and now you're going to have to say now you're gonna pick up on a few things one is the drags become incredibly precise and they're all pretty even right they're not one really drag drags really better than the other one these are all really tight tolerant well machined now you're going to start picking out certain things that you like and you're reel for one for me I like the tall reels right uh the Ross is it and it's a look you start looking at you know do I like the look of the Reel because they're really close to all they're all really good right I fish a lot of novels matter of fact this is is what I fish other than my dry fly reels for my old school stuff I fish the Nautilus a ton and this reel is going to come in at 575 XL Max I love this thing it's got good drag salt water compatic you can go salt water with this you can go trout you can do anything you want right it's got the heavier drag and the smooth drag but you start paying them when you get into these reels because you really cap out it about six bills on these things you start paying for stuff and it's I've got this one on purpose it's got a lime green backstop back here it's got a Blue Knob you know drag knob real seat silver you start paying about 50 bucks a pop and you start looking at like Abel's I didn't bring over enable able reels you got custom paint jobs you can pay up to 500 bucks for a paint job now you're buying frilled right you're not paying for the real the reels you're going to be in there at that 500 600 kind of the top Bend of our reels American made I like the fact that you pay for extra for the American made on this because this thing's not going to break you got to really be it's 100 percent your fault when a real brakes it means you crashed and burned because nothing you fell down and hit it right and they still weren't you not not your they don't warranty you smashing into the Rocks but they'll fix them for you if they can but you get what you pay for on these reels you get a high quality finish you get a high quality tolerance everything is high dollar but when you think about it some that's a pre-war reel that's a 1920 reel right I'm still fishing it my reels tend to last me forever and it's more effect if I like the looks of a new one I get a taller skinnier one like this Hardy I'll fish this this year just because I like that it's tall and skinny and so the bottom line is you start at the very low end and I guarantee you like I said I fished this reel for two years and my Lake rails loved it 50 bucks how can you go wrong well cares if the thing breaks right well I do but mine never have I've never had one fail we have these under demo rods never had one fail I fished the 500 600 nautiluses for all my big trout stuff and some of my leg stuff on the especially lines I particularly like the fact that you can get three spools on these the one that I dropped the drag on don't buy this reel but the one that I like the fact that that's a good value that is the best value in the business so when you get down to it you're going to look at matching your rod do you like the sound I think I hit on that I'm not positive I did I love I mean you're gonna listen to this all day right I don't that's just totally personal what you like I've got buddies that won't fish anything but old Hardee's because they make a lot of noise they love the sound I like that muted sound that's all personal then you're going to look at fit and finish and if how much do you want to pay for the Frills if you want the paint jobs and stuff like that other than that it's pretty much you get what you pay for you step out of the 300 and up you're going to be paying for American made that's a good thing hope you like it hope it helps you out

Channel: TheSlideinn

Views: 41,638

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Id: YJZm5OKtzLw

Length: 15min 35sec (935 seconds)

Published: Tue May 09 2023