sweetandsalt
Well-known member
Contemporary Fly Reel Design – Three Fundamental Categories
Loving fly fishing and its associated paraphernalia as its devoted practitioners are inclined to, a diverse plethora of fly reel designs, from the simple to absurd have been devised over the Centuries. Today, three fundamental categories comprise the vast majority of fly reels. The oldest in current use, spring loaded, pawl checked, over-run preventing reels, typified by the multitudinous iterations of reels produced by Hardy Brothers, long of Alnwick, England are familiar to most fly fishers. The draw-bar adjusted reels, the first reels purpose designed for large, strong saltwater game fish, have been with us since the 1950’s and lastly, and for lack of a broadly applied term, “hub-mounted” disc-drag reels are the newest and fastest growing group.
Spring and Pawl, Click-Check Fly Reels
The British may not have invented fly fishing. There are historic suggestions of Romans fishing with feathered lures and Amazonian Indians fashioning hooks from bone and affixing colorful feathers even earlier, but in terms of culture, literature and tackle, the British are by far the most influential codifiers of the sport. Since the later 1800’s, Hardy Brothers have been designers, makers and purveyors of fine angling equipment for English nobility to commoners around the World in the know. Their most seminal contribution has been the popularization of the “spring and pawl” fly reel. Uncertain as to its origin I contacted long-time Hardy in North America representative and authority, John Shaner who responded:
“Hardy wasn’t the first to use the spring & pawl check in a reel, it goes back a ways before the company was founded. They list “Check Reels” in their first known catalog, circa 1888, and presumably these used a spring & pawl system. However, they were not built by Hardy and were supplied by manufacturers in Birmingham, England. The Hardy Perfect Fly Reel was developed during 1887 -88 and was introduced in 1890. The first Perfects used a flat circular spring and not the leaf spring we are familiar with. I looked through my references but can’t find a firm date for the introduction spring & pawl check. My best guess would be sometime in the first half of the 19th century”. John Shaner – Hardy/Pure
This elegantly simple design features a removable spool, usually via a latch or spring loaded lever that has a gear affixed to its internal spindle core. Within the housing is an assembly incorporating a leaf spring or two that presses against a slotted, triangular pawl mounted on a fixed post that presses into the teeth of the spools gear. When line is stripped from the reel, the spring loaded pawl prevents the spool from revolving freely on it spindle “checking” the rate of outgoing line with, if not actually enough pressure to be called a drag, suitable for preventing the reel from free-spooling. In the process the pawl against gear teeth emits a rapid clicking sound which can build with speed to a mechanical scream…a sound beloved by generations of fly fishers. To apply additional pressure on a strong fish, the angler would place his fingers against the drum of outgoing line further impeding its advance. Sometime in the 1970’s, perhaps with Stan Bogdan’s design for Orvis of the CFO, a “palming rim” was added to the spool overlapping the housing frame facilitating easier and more precise pressure application by the angler. Other Hardy models like the Marquis, also known on this side of the pond as the Scientific Anglers System Reel quickly followed and now palming rims are a standardized feature of most fly reels. The simplicity of spring and pawl reels is attractive to fly fishermen who value the concept of minimal mechanical advantage from their tackle emphasizing our hands-on skills. This same simplicity has meant that such reels have been effectively fabricated from Asia to Argentina to America as well as the original English made ones so a decent reel of this type can be made at very low cost from moldings and stampings to highly exorbitant machinings from bar-stock aluminum that are hard anodized. Fit tolerances and finishing quality can therefore vary greatly but the simple internal mechanism allows them to fish similarly from a performance perspective. Of course, quality of feel, sound and aesthetics are and remain traditional fly fishing values still older than the long tradition of spring and pawl reels.
Draw-Bar Fly Reels
A draw-bar is a cylindrical bar encircled by a coiled spring with a retaining cap on one end and threaded with an adjustable nut or, in the case of a reel, a drag adjusting knob at the other end. Long employed as a tension adjuster in machine equipment it was first applied to create serious drag in a fly reel in the 1950’s. Two Miami area companies, Fin Nor and Seamaster developed reels suitable for the newly burgeoning sport of saltwater fly fishing. They both machined a face and back plate connected by screwed in pillars and had a geared edged drag plate with a cork disc mounted on it. A one-way, spring loaded “dog” mated with the gear teeth preventing counter rotation of the drag plate which pressed against the flat, inside surface of the spool. Drag tension was adjusted via the draw-bar passing through the center of the spool’s arbor. This should sound exceedingly familiar to any angler familiar with contemporary Abel, Tibor and Islander reels which fundamentally employ the same design. My first draw-bar actuated reel in around 1980 was a new South Florida-built Catino Bonefish. Frank Catino, to my knowledge, was the first to build one of these reels with a fully machined one piece frame and spool and all others followed. That reel had a pair of floating as opposed to post-fixed dogs that had to be re-aligned whenever the reels was taken apart for maintenance. It required a patient, deft hand in re-assembly. There are draw-bar reels made in Australia, Japan, South Africa, Italy, England, Canada and the United States with diverse deviations from the standard design but effectively all work similarly. The Hardy Zane, built in S. Korea, used proprietary military aircraft brake “Avocarb” synthetic-carbon hybrid disc drag material instead of cork and the Italian, Alutecnos offers user interchangeable cork or carbon drag surfaces.
By the 1980’s Steve Abel was developing the Abel “Big Game” reels officially introduced in 1988 followed by the interchangeable spooled, mid to large arbor “Super Series”. These are the most refined iteration of the draw-bar concept. The machining and finish work is what all other reels are compared to and every aspect of the design has been refined. Only one dog with one spring is needed to actuate the drag but there are two dogs each with two springs, sort of quadruple redundancy. Only a dime is needed to remove the lock nut from the detented drag knob to disassemble the entire reel. A drop or two of Neatsfoot oil rubbed into the cork composite drag element a touch of grease on the dogs and a bit of light oil on the drag setting spring and bar and you are good to fish. There is virtually nothing to go wrong and, if you dropped the reel in sand or marle, it is easy to rinse out, put back together and be ready for the next big fish. For decades, hard core bonefish and Atlantic salmon camps’ rod racks have been dominated by draw-bar reels because of their stout performance and serviceable reliability. Yes, some maintenance is required, dry cork can squeak and in the extreme, chatter under pressure and exposed to air and water moving parts require periodic lubrication. It has always seemed to me that an angler tying flies, building leaders and rigging new fly lines before a trip can easily add ten minutes of reel maintenance to his preparation.
However, recent innovative developments in sealed-from- the elements drag systems that are maintenance free have struck a chord among fly fishers and are revising perceptions about fly reels.
Hub Mounted Drag System Reels
During the mid-1980’s I was fishing draw-bar reels in the salt and Hardy-built spring and pawl reels for trout but change was in the air. Ari’t Hart, the esoteric fly reel design genius of Holland, was building, in his home shop, fly reels with a drag assembly incased in the thickened spindle of the reel. A cork disc was sandwiched between two discs of synthetic polymer material creating the first application of a multi surface drag system actuated by a one-way clutch bearing. Elegantly compact, effective, housed in a reel loaded with unique design and aesthetic elements, it was and remains a gold mine of innovation. One thing was clear immediately upon fishing these reels for trout; compared to a quality spring and pawl reel with a palming rim, like the CFO IV I was using, a larger trout was brought to net more quickly by the inclusion of a fine tuneable drag built into the reel. A distinct advantage to a valuable wild fish destined to be caught and released as less lactic acid would be built up in its bloodstream insuring a safer return to the river. I was impressed and as the decade turned to the 1990’s, more trout sized reels with drag mechanisms were showing up in fly shops and on the rivers. Unlike classic spring and pawl reels and four decades of draw-bar reels, each maker of which had but minor variations on a specific design theme, hub-mounted drag design is all over the place. Besides reels that had all manner of discs, cylinders and cone shaped elements in their spindles there are perhaps even more that have concentric discs mounted at the base of the spindle often incased in a machined recess in the housing of the reel. In fact, the then proliferating off-shore-built, imported reels’ home factories often simply took the drag system from the spinning reels they were making in much greater quantities and lightly modified it to fit and be adjusted in a fly reel. So we had and have still more of today, a flood of modestly priced reels with drags supplementing the more dedicated fly reel designs devised by a growing cadre of machine shop endowed makers here in America. Everybody, it seems, has a concept as to how to build a better reel but the one thing that almost all have in common is the employment of a one way clutch bearing. That bearing might be a 25 cent, off the shelf, off-shore piece or a costly, custom-built, advanced material, high tech, fully incased thing. To convert such a reel from one hand wind to the other, the bearing has to be accessed and reversed. In some instances one simply unclips some little part, reaches in and flips it over and in others it is a significant chore involving some disassembly even potential damage to the bearing and yet in a few more, it can’t be done, the whole drag assembly requires factory replacement. This last option is potentially the best as any drag system easily accessed by human fingers can be equally open to contamination from water-borne or lubricant contaminants. No washer or “O” ring will keep water, worse, saltwater out for long.
I am uncertain who came up with this great idea first but sometime during this fertile period of the reinvention of the fly reel a sealed module containing stacked, multiple disc elements was employed. Like that seminal Ari’t Hart reel, the concept of utilizing both sides of a disc, doubling its sweep or effective drag producing surface was conceived. It may have first been done by Van Staal but surely it was Hatch Reels of California that has refined and popularized this drag design. In both cases the drag module is a removable, self-contained component within which are several alternating discs, in Hatch’s case of stainless steel and machined from bar-stock proprietary synthetic asymmetrical drag elements. The larger the reel the more and larger the individual elements thus providing, scaled, more potent stopping power as the line weight capacity of the reel is increased.
Sealed stacked drags have grown to dominate the current trend toward powerful, maintenance free reels and are available at all price points and sizes from the beautifully built Hatch, newly introduced Abel “SD” and Hardy Fortuna X to mid-priced reels like Orvis Mirage, Cheeky and new Allan Omega to modest but still effective Hardy Ultralite Disc Drag and Orvis Hydros…just to name a few. Bucking this trend but notable in their success is Nautilus Reels who employ a hub mounted full sealed sandwich drag of large diameter but light weight. The fully enclosed, including advanced technology bearing, drag of the NV series is very powerful and infinitely adjustable and so sealed that to convert the reel from left to right hand wind the drag system has to be replaced at the Miami factory. These are among the lightest weight per capacity big game reels.
Non-Drag Design Features and Reliability Issues
The best way to keep all reels running smoothly and preserve their long term reliability is to clean and appropriately lubricate them and store them fully dried and with their check or drag set to zero. Abrasive grit, not necessarily obvious sand but even water borne micro dirt particles picked up and entrapped in high viscosity lubricants like grease, wear away at metal parts over time. Salt will corrode and promote electrolytic processes even in the most durable reel making materials. After any extended period of use, even if I have been hosing the reels down daily as on a saltwater adventure, I thoroughly clean, dry and re-lubricate my reels upon returning home.
Spring and pawl reel are easy as there are so few moving parts. The triangular pawls benefit from a spot of grease and the springs and spindle from a light coating of oil. I like to put an extra drop of oil on the spindle head where it is encircled by the groove that the spring loaded lever locks into to keep the spool in place. I hold the reel face side down and work the release lever a few times to assure the oil coats the hidden spring loaded mechanism within the housing cap. Usually, a slight bit of excess oil leaks out around the lever opening which I simply wipe away. It is rare and they are easily user replaced but I have seen Hardy leaf springs break at the rounded bend where they lock onto their retaining posts…just long term fatigue I assume. Also all early and many current reels of this type were cast rather than machined. Castings are more brittle and I have seen a few fractures. These almost always occur from user error as once, a long time ago, I threw a rock with a chord attached over a high tree branch to hoist a food stash out of bear reach. The stone arched through the air and came down near the tree’s trunk where I had leaned my rod. It made a direct impact with a pillar on my LRH Lightweight cracking and bending it inward so the spool could not be removed. The reel was not thrown out of round and continued to do its job, catching many wilderness trout with some of the smaller ones winding up in the pan. My camp mate made fun of me of course, which I deserved. A few mornings latter, he emerged from his tent in the morning and let out a shriek. During the night a salt-relishing porcupine had gnawed his cork grip completely off his Scott Pow-R-Ply leaving nothing but knobbles of glue residue. After our trip his rod went back to San Francisco for new cork and my Hardy went all the way to Alnwick, England where they cut out the pillar and dovetailed in a custom replacement and a fine job they did. It is hard when backpacking but whenever transportation other than my feet is available, I always have back up tackle.
Draw-bar reels are relatively bullet proof hence their long time popularity at saltwater flats destinations and salmon camps everywhere. Other than carelessly misplacing the little lock bolt retaining the drag knob on an Abel there are no small, loose parts to loose after disassembly. And the reel would still work fine even if you did drop the little piece overboard. The simple design is easy to clean and lubricate with little that can go wrong. Once, on a now discontinued cork dag surface reel, I had the adhesive holding the cork to the drag plate come rather messily un-glued rendering the reel inoperable. I have never seen that happen on any of the established makers, Abel, Tibor or Islander’s reels though. Islander has an “O” ring retainer around the face cap of the draw-bar so when you remove the spool; the draw-bar and its spring remain intact within the spool; you press it to remove it. I have three Islanders and the two I’ve used the most have had that “O” ring deteriorate and disintegrate. It is a convenience though and in no way impacts the performance of the reel. Some of my Ari’t Hart reels use a brace of “O” rings as a grip enhancer in a grove on the handle. They too wear out and I have learned where the hardware stores are along my angling routs where a wide “O” ring assortment is available to replace them. I like the store in Ennis, Montana. They are not a performance contributor either. “O” rings are not reliable, our Nation once lost a Space Shuttle and her entire crew due to a failed “O” ring and that one was not a 10 cent one from Ennis. A reel that employs “O” rings to retain the spool or seal the drag from water penetration has a design flaw in waiting.
I used to say I could fully disassemble any reel on the market; OK, there were a few like the Billy Pate’s that had so many washers, springs, spacers, etc. that I did not want to take it apart but I could. Not so any more. Among the diversity of the hub-mounted drag reels there are some I don’t even own the request tools to access their innards. In some worst case scenarios I have had to send two reels from different importers back to their US brand headquarters. Both reels had machined recesses in their housings that the disc drag assembly sat in and were locked in place and both had a gooey buildup of salt from retaining seawater that could get into that recess but not out. One merely had to be disassembled by a technician and cleaned the other required replacement parts worth more than the reel. I did have it fixed but neither of those reels will ever sit on a reel seat of mine ever again. I had another reel go free-spool on me while fighting a large trout and as I scrambled to manually regain control it locked up…pop, the fish was gone. Another import that defied disassembly, it had a cork disc sandwiched between two stainless washers. My buddy had the same reel in a saltwater size do the same to him. He removed it from the rod and made a dramatic display to his clients by throwing it overboard…just as far as he could (litterbug)! Turns out, like all cork drag surfaces it required a hit of neatsfoot oil. I set the drag to zero, spread the stainless washers one at a time and squirted the rejuvenating oil into the drag assemble which took about 500% more than actually needed. I then cleaned the thing up, re-set the drag and back to smooth and functional, but who knew? I don’t often fish that reel any more either but it is still on the market and its distributor has nothing about this maintenance on his web site. Another handsomely machined and anodized beauty from a well-known company started making some odd cranky sounds while fishing a favorite spring creek. My fishing partner suggested we open it up to take a look see and, sproing, lots of little springs and bits flew out of the thing into the tall grass on the bank where we sat! Luckily the truck and more reels was not far away. One the other hand, I have fished Hatch, Hardy Fortuna and Nautilus NV reels under very demanding conditions with no issues of any kind and Nautilus FWX, Hardy U DD and Galvan Torque trout fishing with superlative result as well and have recently rigged up Abel’s new SD and am optimistic about its performance too.
Spring and pawl, click check reels and draw-bar reels have been around a long time and are as refined as they are likely to become. Even brand new models like the newest Orvis CFO built beautifully by Abel and Douglas Outdoors tweaked check mechanism, New York-built, Argus, are but incremental, albeit elegant, departures from an almost 200 year old design. Hub-mounted drags are the relative new comers and, within their endless diversity, a lot of experimentation is still going on and we fly fishing consumers are the guinea pigs. I’m trying to name names only positively because some in this category do not belong out on the water, at least not where a modicum of performance may be required from them. Look for a reel that has a reputation for being sealed, some claim to be sealed but are not or not for long. Most anything Man can put together Nature can get inside of. Look for a spool assembly that features few parts, I like the threaded, captive cap type as it has no springs. Machined from bar-stock and then hard anodized is stronger and more precise fitting than cast or cast and machine finished. Across the board, aspect ratio; the spool width to depth relationship is very important and not just for backing and line capacity.
A few years ago the wife and I had the pleasure of fishing a small, end of the road bonefish camp at the doorstep a phenomenal, wilderness habitat. We shared camp with a young (40 year old), tall and athletic, hard-core guy form Colorado who was fishing his way through the Bahamas. He tied innovative flies and was particularly proud of his brace of lightest-in-class, top-of-the-line rods mounted with equally lightweight, very large arbor, wide spooled reels. We had a very productive week with good weather and lots of opportunities. The guides fished by tide not the clock and on our last day, both his and our skiff putted toward the dock on the evening falling tide. We waved and he held aloft a handful of broken rod sections. Turns out that while regaining line fighting a good bonefish, he was distracted from paying due-attention to the uniformity of line retrieval onto the shallow, wide spool of his reel, line built up to one side and jammed a reel pillar, locking up. Normally, the fish pops the tippet in such circumstances but our camp friend was fishing strong fluorocarbon tippet with good knots and his light, slender 8-weight experienced catastrophic failure and went from a 4 piece to 6 piece rod. The manufacturer of that brand of reels touts, on their web site, the engineering advantage of their design as minimizing changes in drag setting and maintaining a high retrieval rate. The spool arbor not changing much as line is run off because of its wide/shallow aspect makes engineering logic but requires excessive level winding attention to achieve uniformity of line retrieval, therefore is poor for actually fishing. Hatch Reels, conversely, mathematically calculated the amplitude of line under pressure between the stripping guide and the reel and designed their approximately one inch spool width based on these measurement. A company with no less experience making fine reels than Abel Automatics used to offer reels in the Super Series alternating between wide and narrow models; Super 8 being wide and Super 9 being narrow for example, giving the consumer personal preference choice. Most of the experienced types that fish these reels chose the narrow ones only and wisely, Abel redesigned the full series to be narrow models only. Understand that a narrow spool requires a deeper depth to achieve appropriate backing capacity but with that backing loaded the arbor is expanded to a larger diameter compensating for the requisite smaller spool arbor. An alternative is to maintain a large physical arbor and increase the exterior diameter of the reel producing a super large arbor reel. Hardy has been employing this design in their Ultralite Disc Drag and newer saltwater intended, SDS. I like this concept though it makes the reel larger hence heavier and some traditionalists find its appearance too large aesthetically. Get over that if you can because increased diameter, large arbor and narrow width spools will likely be the logical aspect ratio winner as these reel designs mature. Along with these Hardy’s, some Galvan’s and especially Nautilus are already onto this proportion advantage.
I have mentioned several reel brands illustratively in this article, these are some reels I have had hands-on experience with to one degree or another. Not being a “Shootout” or even a representative comparative analysis, this is intended to be more of a review of the current state-of-the-art of reel design than a guide to particular products. In an era of multi-axis computerized lathes, broad accessibility of exotic alloys and sophisticated synthetics and reel applications ranging from high country brooks to oceanic blue water, new and innovative designs are proliferating. It is an exciting time for fly fishing tackle manufacturers and fly fishermen alike.
Loving fly fishing and its associated paraphernalia as its devoted practitioners are inclined to, a diverse plethora of fly reel designs, from the simple to absurd have been devised over the Centuries. Today, three fundamental categories comprise the vast majority of fly reels. The oldest in current use, spring loaded, pawl checked, over-run preventing reels, typified by the multitudinous iterations of reels produced by Hardy Brothers, long of Alnwick, England are familiar to most fly fishers. The draw-bar adjusted reels, the first reels purpose designed for large, strong saltwater game fish, have been with us since the 1950’s and lastly, and for lack of a broadly applied term, “hub-mounted” disc-drag reels are the newest and fastest growing group.
Spring and Pawl, Click-Check Fly Reels
The British may not have invented fly fishing. There are historic suggestions of Romans fishing with feathered lures and Amazonian Indians fashioning hooks from bone and affixing colorful feathers even earlier, but in terms of culture, literature and tackle, the British are by far the most influential codifiers of the sport. Since the later 1800’s, Hardy Brothers have been designers, makers and purveyors of fine angling equipment for English nobility to commoners around the World in the know. Their most seminal contribution has been the popularization of the “spring and pawl” fly reel. Uncertain as to its origin I contacted long-time Hardy in North America representative and authority, John Shaner who responded:
“Hardy wasn’t the first to use the spring & pawl check in a reel, it goes back a ways before the company was founded. They list “Check Reels” in their first known catalog, circa 1888, and presumably these used a spring & pawl system. However, they were not built by Hardy and were supplied by manufacturers in Birmingham, England. The Hardy Perfect Fly Reel was developed during 1887 -88 and was introduced in 1890. The first Perfects used a flat circular spring and not the leaf spring we are familiar with. I looked through my references but can’t find a firm date for the introduction spring & pawl check. My best guess would be sometime in the first half of the 19th century”. John Shaner – Hardy/Pure
This elegantly simple design features a removable spool, usually via a latch or spring loaded lever that has a gear affixed to its internal spindle core. Within the housing is an assembly incorporating a leaf spring or two that presses against a slotted, triangular pawl mounted on a fixed post that presses into the teeth of the spools gear. When line is stripped from the reel, the spring loaded pawl prevents the spool from revolving freely on it spindle “checking” the rate of outgoing line with, if not actually enough pressure to be called a drag, suitable for preventing the reel from free-spooling. In the process the pawl against gear teeth emits a rapid clicking sound which can build with speed to a mechanical scream…a sound beloved by generations of fly fishers. To apply additional pressure on a strong fish, the angler would place his fingers against the drum of outgoing line further impeding its advance. Sometime in the 1970’s, perhaps with Stan Bogdan’s design for Orvis of the CFO, a “palming rim” was added to the spool overlapping the housing frame facilitating easier and more precise pressure application by the angler. Other Hardy models like the Marquis, also known on this side of the pond as the Scientific Anglers System Reel quickly followed and now palming rims are a standardized feature of most fly reels. The simplicity of spring and pawl reels is attractive to fly fishermen who value the concept of minimal mechanical advantage from their tackle emphasizing our hands-on skills. This same simplicity has meant that such reels have been effectively fabricated from Asia to Argentina to America as well as the original English made ones so a decent reel of this type can be made at very low cost from moldings and stampings to highly exorbitant machinings from bar-stock aluminum that are hard anodized. Fit tolerances and finishing quality can therefore vary greatly but the simple internal mechanism allows them to fish similarly from a performance perspective. Of course, quality of feel, sound and aesthetics are and remain traditional fly fishing values still older than the long tradition of spring and pawl reels.
Draw-Bar Fly Reels
A draw-bar is a cylindrical bar encircled by a coiled spring with a retaining cap on one end and threaded with an adjustable nut or, in the case of a reel, a drag adjusting knob at the other end. Long employed as a tension adjuster in machine equipment it was first applied to create serious drag in a fly reel in the 1950’s. Two Miami area companies, Fin Nor and Seamaster developed reels suitable for the newly burgeoning sport of saltwater fly fishing. They both machined a face and back plate connected by screwed in pillars and had a geared edged drag plate with a cork disc mounted on it. A one-way, spring loaded “dog” mated with the gear teeth preventing counter rotation of the drag plate which pressed against the flat, inside surface of the spool. Drag tension was adjusted via the draw-bar passing through the center of the spool’s arbor. This should sound exceedingly familiar to any angler familiar with contemporary Abel, Tibor and Islander reels which fundamentally employ the same design. My first draw-bar actuated reel in around 1980 was a new South Florida-built Catino Bonefish. Frank Catino, to my knowledge, was the first to build one of these reels with a fully machined one piece frame and spool and all others followed. That reel had a pair of floating as opposed to post-fixed dogs that had to be re-aligned whenever the reels was taken apart for maintenance. It required a patient, deft hand in re-assembly. There are draw-bar reels made in Australia, Japan, South Africa, Italy, England, Canada and the United States with diverse deviations from the standard design but effectively all work similarly. The Hardy Zane, built in S. Korea, used proprietary military aircraft brake “Avocarb” synthetic-carbon hybrid disc drag material instead of cork and the Italian, Alutecnos offers user interchangeable cork or carbon drag surfaces.
By the 1980’s Steve Abel was developing the Abel “Big Game” reels officially introduced in 1988 followed by the interchangeable spooled, mid to large arbor “Super Series”. These are the most refined iteration of the draw-bar concept. The machining and finish work is what all other reels are compared to and every aspect of the design has been refined. Only one dog with one spring is needed to actuate the drag but there are two dogs each with two springs, sort of quadruple redundancy. Only a dime is needed to remove the lock nut from the detented drag knob to disassemble the entire reel. A drop or two of Neatsfoot oil rubbed into the cork composite drag element a touch of grease on the dogs and a bit of light oil on the drag setting spring and bar and you are good to fish. There is virtually nothing to go wrong and, if you dropped the reel in sand or marle, it is easy to rinse out, put back together and be ready for the next big fish. For decades, hard core bonefish and Atlantic salmon camps’ rod racks have been dominated by draw-bar reels because of their stout performance and serviceable reliability. Yes, some maintenance is required, dry cork can squeak and in the extreme, chatter under pressure and exposed to air and water moving parts require periodic lubrication. It has always seemed to me that an angler tying flies, building leaders and rigging new fly lines before a trip can easily add ten minutes of reel maintenance to his preparation.
However, recent innovative developments in sealed-from- the elements drag systems that are maintenance free have struck a chord among fly fishers and are revising perceptions about fly reels.
Hub Mounted Drag System Reels
During the mid-1980’s I was fishing draw-bar reels in the salt and Hardy-built spring and pawl reels for trout but change was in the air. Ari’t Hart, the esoteric fly reel design genius of Holland, was building, in his home shop, fly reels with a drag assembly incased in the thickened spindle of the reel. A cork disc was sandwiched between two discs of synthetic polymer material creating the first application of a multi surface drag system actuated by a one-way clutch bearing. Elegantly compact, effective, housed in a reel loaded with unique design and aesthetic elements, it was and remains a gold mine of innovation. One thing was clear immediately upon fishing these reels for trout; compared to a quality spring and pawl reel with a palming rim, like the CFO IV I was using, a larger trout was brought to net more quickly by the inclusion of a fine tuneable drag built into the reel. A distinct advantage to a valuable wild fish destined to be caught and released as less lactic acid would be built up in its bloodstream insuring a safer return to the river. I was impressed and as the decade turned to the 1990’s, more trout sized reels with drag mechanisms were showing up in fly shops and on the rivers. Unlike classic spring and pawl reels and four decades of draw-bar reels, each maker of which had but minor variations on a specific design theme, hub-mounted drag design is all over the place. Besides reels that had all manner of discs, cylinders and cone shaped elements in their spindles there are perhaps even more that have concentric discs mounted at the base of the spindle often incased in a machined recess in the housing of the reel. In fact, the then proliferating off-shore-built, imported reels’ home factories often simply took the drag system from the spinning reels they were making in much greater quantities and lightly modified it to fit and be adjusted in a fly reel. So we had and have still more of today, a flood of modestly priced reels with drags supplementing the more dedicated fly reel designs devised by a growing cadre of machine shop endowed makers here in America. Everybody, it seems, has a concept as to how to build a better reel but the one thing that almost all have in common is the employment of a one way clutch bearing. That bearing might be a 25 cent, off the shelf, off-shore piece or a costly, custom-built, advanced material, high tech, fully incased thing. To convert such a reel from one hand wind to the other, the bearing has to be accessed and reversed. In some instances one simply unclips some little part, reaches in and flips it over and in others it is a significant chore involving some disassembly even potential damage to the bearing and yet in a few more, it can’t be done, the whole drag assembly requires factory replacement. This last option is potentially the best as any drag system easily accessed by human fingers can be equally open to contamination from water-borne or lubricant contaminants. No washer or “O” ring will keep water, worse, saltwater out for long.
I am uncertain who came up with this great idea first but sometime during this fertile period of the reinvention of the fly reel a sealed module containing stacked, multiple disc elements was employed. Like that seminal Ari’t Hart reel, the concept of utilizing both sides of a disc, doubling its sweep or effective drag producing surface was conceived. It may have first been done by Van Staal but surely it was Hatch Reels of California that has refined and popularized this drag design. In both cases the drag module is a removable, self-contained component within which are several alternating discs, in Hatch’s case of stainless steel and machined from bar-stock proprietary synthetic asymmetrical drag elements. The larger the reel the more and larger the individual elements thus providing, scaled, more potent stopping power as the line weight capacity of the reel is increased.
Sealed stacked drags have grown to dominate the current trend toward powerful, maintenance free reels and are available at all price points and sizes from the beautifully built Hatch, newly introduced Abel “SD” and Hardy Fortuna X to mid-priced reels like Orvis Mirage, Cheeky and new Allan Omega to modest but still effective Hardy Ultralite Disc Drag and Orvis Hydros…just to name a few. Bucking this trend but notable in their success is Nautilus Reels who employ a hub mounted full sealed sandwich drag of large diameter but light weight. The fully enclosed, including advanced technology bearing, drag of the NV series is very powerful and infinitely adjustable and so sealed that to convert the reel from left to right hand wind the drag system has to be replaced at the Miami factory. These are among the lightest weight per capacity big game reels.
Non-Drag Design Features and Reliability Issues
The best way to keep all reels running smoothly and preserve their long term reliability is to clean and appropriately lubricate them and store them fully dried and with their check or drag set to zero. Abrasive grit, not necessarily obvious sand but even water borne micro dirt particles picked up and entrapped in high viscosity lubricants like grease, wear away at metal parts over time. Salt will corrode and promote electrolytic processes even in the most durable reel making materials. After any extended period of use, even if I have been hosing the reels down daily as on a saltwater adventure, I thoroughly clean, dry and re-lubricate my reels upon returning home.
Spring and pawl reel are easy as there are so few moving parts. The triangular pawls benefit from a spot of grease and the springs and spindle from a light coating of oil. I like to put an extra drop of oil on the spindle head where it is encircled by the groove that the spring loaded lever locks into to keep the spool in place. I hold the reel face side down and work the release lever a few times to assure the oil coats the hidden spring loaded mechanism within the housing cap. Usually, a slight bit of excess oil leaks out around the lever opening which I simply wipe away. It is rare and they are easily user replaced but I have seen Hardy leaf springs break at the rounded bend where they lock onto their retaining posts…just long term fatigue I assume. Also all early and many current reels of this type were cast rather than machined. Castings are more brittle and I have seen a few fractures. These almost always occur from user error as once, a long time ago, I threw a rock with a chord attached over a high tree branch to hoist a food stash out of bear reach. The stone arched through the air and came down near the tree’s trunk where I had leaned my rod. It made a direct impact with a pillar on my LRH Lightweight cracking and bending it inward so the spool could not be removed. The reel was not thrown out of round and continued to do its job, catching many wilderness trout with some of the smaller ones winding up in the pan. My camp mate made fun of me of course, which I deserved. A few mornings latter, he emerged from his tent in the morning and let out a shriek. During the night a salt-relishing porcupine had gnawed his cork grip completely off his Scott Pow-R-Ply leaving nothing but knobbles of glue residue. After our trip his rod went back to San Francisco for new cork and my Hardy went all the way to Alnwick, England where they cut out the pillar and dovetailed in a custom replacement and a fine job they did. It is hard when backpacking but whenever transportation other than my feet is available, I always have back up tackle.
Draw-bar reels are relatively bullet proof hence their long time popularity at saltwater flats destinations and salmon camps everywhere. Other than carelessly misplacing the little lock bolt retaining the drag knob on an Abel there are no small, loose parts to loose after disassembly. And the reel would still work fine even if you did drop the little piece overboard. The simple design is easy to clean and lubricate with little that can go wrong. Once, on a now discontinued cork dag surface reel, I had the adhesive holding the cork to the drag plate come rather messily un-glued rendering the reel inoperable. I have never seen that happen on any of the established makers, Abel, Tibor or Islander’s reels though. Islander has an “O” ring retainer around the face cap of the draw-bar so when you remove the spool; the draw-bar and its spring remain intact within the spool; you press it to remove it. I have three Islanders and the two I’ve used the most have had that “O” ring deteriorate and disintegrate. It is a convenience though and in no way impacts the performance of the reel. Some of my Ari’t Hart reels use a brace of “O” rings as a grip enhancer in a grove on the handle. They too wear out and I have learned where the hardware stores are along my angling routs where a wide “O” ring assortment is available to replace them. I like the store in Ennis, Montana. They are not a performance contributor either. “O” rings are not reliable, our Nation once lost a Space Shuttle and her entire crew due to a failed “O” ring and that one was not a 10 cent one from Ennis. A reel that employs “O” rings to retain the spool or seal the drag from water penetration has a design flaw in waiting.
I used to say I could fully disassemble any reel on the market; OK, there were a few like the Billy Pate’s that had so many washers, springs, spacers, etc. that I did not want to take it apart but I could. Not so any more. Among the diversity of the hub-mounted drag reels there are some I don’t even own the request tools to access their innards. In some worst case scenarios I have had to send two reels from different importers back to their US brand headquarters. Both reels had machined recesses in their housings that the disc drag assembly sat in and were locked in place and both had a gooey buildup of salt from retaining seawater that could get into that recess but not out. One merely had to be disassembled by a technician and cleaned the other required replacement parts worth more than the reel. I did have it fixed but neither of those reels will ever sit on a reel seat of mine ever again. I had another reel go free-spool on me while fighting a large trout and as I scrambled to manually regain control it locked up…pop, the fish was gone. Another import that defied disassembly, it had a cork disc sandwiched between two stainless washers. My buddy had the same reel in a saltwater size do the same to him. He removed it from the rod and made a dramatic display to his clients by throwing it overboard…just as far as he could (litterbug)! Turns out, like all cork drag surfaces it required a hit of neatsfoot oil. I set the drag to zero, spread the stainless washers one at a time and squirted the rejuvenating oil into the drag assemble which took about 500% more than actually needed. I then cleaned the thing up, re-set the drag and back to smooth and functional, but who knew? I don’t often fish that reel any more either but it is still on the market and its distributor has nothing about this maintenance on his web site. Another handsomely machined and anodized beauty from a well-known company started making some odd cranky sounds while fishing a favorite spring creek. My fishing partner suggested we open it up to take a look see and, sproing, lots of little springs and bits flew out of the thing into the tall grass on the bank where we sat! Luckily the truck and more reels was not far away. One the other hand, I have fished Hatch, Hardy Fortuna and Nautilus NV reels under very demanding conditions with no issues of any kind and Nautilus FWX, Hardy U DD and Galvan Torque trout fishing with superlative result as well and have recently rigged up Abel’s new SD and am optimistic about its performance too.
Spring and pawl, click check reels and draw-bar reels have been around a long time and are as refined as they are likely to become. Even brand new models like the newest Orvis CFO built beautifully by Abel and Douglas Outdoors tweaked check mechanism, New York-built, Argus, are but incremental, albeit elegant, departures from an almost 200 year old design. Hub-mounted drags are the relative new comers and, within their endless diversity, a lot of experimentation is still going on and we fly fishing consumers are the guinea pigs. I’m trying to name names only positively because some in this category do not belong out on the water, at least not where a modicum of performance may be required from them. Look for a reel that has a reputation for being sealed, some claim to be sealed but are not or not for long. Most anything Man can put together Nature can get inside of. Look for a spool assembly that features few parts, I like the threaded, captive cap type as it has no springs. Machined from bar-stock and then hard anodized is stronger and more precise fitting than cast or cast and machine finished. Across the board, aspect ratio; the spool width to depth relationship is very important and not just for backing and line capacity.
A few years ago the wife and I had the pleasure of fishing a small, end of the road bonefish camp at the doorstep a phenomenal, wilderness habitat. We shared camp with a young (40 year old), tall and athletic, hard-core guy form Colorado who was fishing his way through the Bahamas. He tied innovative flies and was particularly proud of his brace of lightest-in-class, top-of-the-line rods mounted with equally lightweight, very large arbor, wide spooled reels. We had a very productive week with good weather and lots of opportunities. The guides fished by tide not the clock and on our last day, both his and our skiff putted toward the dock on the evening falling tide. We waved and he held aloft a handful of broken rod sections. Turns out that while regaining line fighting a good bonefish, he was distracted from paying due-attention to the uniformity of line retrieval onto the shallow, wide spool of his reel, line built up to one side and jammed a reel pillar, locking up. Normally, the fish pops the tippet in such circumstances but our camp friend was fishing strong fluorocarbon tippet with good knots and his light, slender 8-weight experienced catastrophic failure and went from a 4 piece to 6 piece rod. The manufacturer of that brand of reels touts, on their web site, the engineering advantage of their design as minimizing changes in drag setting and maintaining a high retrieval rate. The spool arbor not changing much as line is run off because of its wide/shallow aspect makes engineering logic but requires excessive level winding attention to achieve uniformity of line retrieval, therefore is poor for actually fishing. Hatch Reels, conversely, mathematically calculated the amplitude of line under pressure between the stripping guide and the reel and designed their approximately one inch spool width based on these measurement. A company with no less experience making fine reels than Abel Automatics used to offer reels in the Super Series alternating between wide and narrow models; Super 8 being wide and Super 9 being narrow for example, giving the consumer personal preference choice. Most of the experienced types that fish these reels chose the narrow ones only and wisely, Abel redesigned the full series to be narrow models only. Understand that a narrow spool requires a deeper depth to achieve appropriate backing capacity but with that backing loaded the arbor is expanded to a larger diameter compensating for the requisite smaller spool arbor. An alternative is to maintain a large physical arbor and increase the exterior diameter of the reel producing a super large arbor reel. Hardy has been employing this design in their Ultralite Disc Drag and newer saltwater intended, SDS. I like this concept though it makes the reel larger hence heavier and some traditionalists find its appearance too large aesthetically. Get over that if you can because increased diameter, large arbor and narrow width spools will likely be the logical aspect ratio winner as these reel designs mature. Along with these Hardy’s, some Galvan’s and especially Nautilus are already onto this proportion advantage.
I have mentioned several reel brands illustratively in this article, these are some reels I have had hands-on experience with to one degree or another. Not being a “Shootout” or even a representative comparative analysis, this is intended to be more of a review of the current state-of-the-art of reel design than a guide to particular products. In an era of multi-axis computerized lathes, broad accessibility of exotic alloys and sophisticated synthetics and reel applications ranging from high country brooks to oceanic blue water, new and innovative designs are proliferating. It is an exciting time for fly fishing tackle manufacturers and fly fishermen alike.
