sweetandsalt
Well-known member
I am re-posting this from the "General Discussions" tab as it got little attention there. I probably should have put it before you reel afficianados to begin with:
I have often railed against wide (anything over an inch), shallow aspect ratio fly reels in this Forum. This puts me at odds with the some of the most popular reel brand choices used and recommended by my fellow contributors. Of course I appreciate that there is scant comparison between a small stream trout outfit and one intended to tackle tropical flats species, however, on the theory that there is trickle-down technology form a manufacturer's highest performance gear to their smaller, lighter weight products, I am going to relate a recent fishing camp tale.
Last week my wife and I enjoyed our annual adventure to a bonefish lodge in a remote, out-island Bahamian locale. Upon our arrival, there was but one other guest in camp, a tall, athletic, very hard core young (30's) man from Colorado. He had been bonefishing on another more southerly island with a friend and when the friend needed to return to the States, he ventured to this camp, on the doorstep of a spectacular fishery, on his own for two more weeks of pedal-to-the-metal fishing. We were pleased to meet this charming fellow flats fanatic who tied beautiful, imaginative flies and gave serious consideration to all his equipment. He was particularly enamored of his ultimate in light weight brace of rods. On the front porch rod rack he had a Helios #7 & 8 each mounted with a Waterworks reel loaded with gelspun backing to provide adequate capacity on their shallow/wide spools behind tropical floating lines. Picking up the 8-weight really felt impressively like holding a 6. He had caught multiple dozens of bonefish up to large sizes on these rigs and was very enthusiastic. On the last day of his epic trip his skiff and ours arrived back at our home dock simultaneously and, as we slowly motored in, he held aloft a handful of broken rod sections. He had landed several fish and then, battling a particularly good one and regaining line, something happened. He had neglected to pay enough attention to the uniformity of distribution of the re-spooling line and, as it is prone to in wider/shallow designs, line built up unevenly to one side and jammed against the reel frame pillar. This is common and the usual result is a fish swimming off with a fly with or without a tippet trailing behind it embedded in its jaw. In this more extreme case, the angler tied good knots and used strong fluorocarbon material and rather than knot failure, experienced catastrophic rod failure...the abrupt reel lock-up caused by the line jam made the rod break in two places, mid and upper butt section simultaneously.
Now, plying a high country stream with a diminutive outfit rigged with a gossamer tippet, you are unlikely to explode your rod if your line jams as the jewel-like cutthroat darts toward a dead-fall. Never-the-less, take a lesson learned the hard way from our bonefish camp companion and take the fishability of the aspect ratio of a reel into consideration when acquiring new tackle. You should be paying attention to the fish not the uniformity of line retrieval on you reel when, ultimately a fine fish takes your fly.
I have often railed against wide (anything over an inch), shallow aspect ratio fly reels in this Forum. This puts me at odds with the some of the most popular reel brand choices used and recommended by my fellow contributors. Of course I appreciate that there is scant comparison between a small stream trout outfit and one intended to tackle tropical flats species, however, on the theory that there is trickle-down technology form a manufacturer's highest performance gear to their smaller, lighter weight products, I am going to relate a recent fishing camp tale.
Last week my wife and I enjoyed our annual adventure to a bonefish lodge in a remote, out-island Bahamian locale. Upon our arrival, there was but one other guest in camp, a tall, athletic, very hard core young (30's) man from Colorado. He had been bonefishing on another more southerly island with a friend and when the friend needed to return to the States, he ventured to this camp, on the doorstep of a spectacular fishery, on his own for two more weeks of pedal-to-the-metal fishing. We were pleased to meet this charming fellow flats fanatic who tied beautiful, imaginative flies and gave serious consideration to all his equipment. He was particularly enamored of his ultimate in light weight brace of rods. On the front porch rod rack he had a Helios #7 & 8 each mounted with a Waterworks reel loaded with gelspun backing to provide adequate capacity on their shallow/wide spools behind tropical floating lines. Picking up the 8-weight really felt impressively like holding a 6. He had caught multiple dozens of bonefish up to large sizes on these rigs and was very enthusiastic. On the last day of his epic trip his skiff and ours arrived back at our home dock simultaneously and, as we slowly motored in, he held aloft a handful of broken rod sections. He had landed several fish and then, battling a particularly good one and regaining line, something happened. He had neglected to pay enough attention to the uniformity of distribution of the re-spooling line and, as it is prone to in wider/shallow designs, line built up unevenly to one side and jammed against the reel frame pillar. This is common and the usual result is a fish swimming off with a fly with or without a tippet trailing behind it embedded in its jaw. In this more extreme case, the angler tied good knots and used strong fluorocarbon material and rather than knot failure, experienced catastrophic rod failure...the abrupt reel lock-up caused by the line jam made the rod break in two places, mid and upper butt section simultaneously.
Now, plying a high country stream with a diminutive outfit rigged with a gossamer tippet, you are unlikely to explode your rod if your line jams as the jewel-like cutthroat darts toward a dead-fall. Never-the-less, take a lesson learned the hard way from our bonefish camp companion and take the fishability of the aspect ratio of a reel into consideration when acquiring new tackle. You should be paying attention to the fish not the uniformity of line retrieval on you reel when, ultimately a fine fish takes your fly.
