Big Game Reels--- The Next Step

In the Tackle Basics article that began this section I recommended people to the Penn 113H and 114H as two reels that will handle the broad spectrum of fishing opportunities to be had in La Paz. Taken care of, these two reels will last for a decade or more. But what about all those big gold and platinum machines with testosterone just dripping off of the 4” long price tag? The world of premium big game reels, long dominated by Penn with the occasional Finish or Australian entry, has blown open in the last 15 years. Many vendors have entered this race, bringing material science and technology to the front. Typically these reels have single piece frames machined from a block of aircraft aluminum, lever drags, and many have 2 different gear ratios. These are all features that put them way ahead of the traditional star drag big game reels. While your Penn 113H is a very strong candidate to remain in your arsenal, the first reel to replace is the 114H. You will use this reel on large fish, cubera snapper, marlin, big tuna and while the Penn will do the job these premium reels offer some substantial advantages when dealing with fish that may well be bigger than you are. The single piece machined billet frames are a lot stronger than the post type frame on older reels. This not only results in longer life, but also makes your task easier. I once participated in a demonstration by Tiburon, one of the early makers of retrofitable single piece frames for Penn reels. They had a stock Penn 114H and one that had had the frame replaced with their single piece frame. The rods and reels was clamped in place and a 15 pound weight was attached to the end of the line sitting on the floor. They wanted you to reel the dead weight up three feet off the floor without any pumping of the rod. The single piece frame reel was significantly easier to reel. Even though the traditional post frame reel appeared rigid and tough it was clear that the side plates were not kept parallel under load and that the slight deflection caused by the dead weight added significantly to the effort required to reel. The premium reels that we are discussing are all carved from a block of aluminum maintaining the critical alignment of the mechanisms. Lever drags are also universal in the class of reels that we are discussing. There are two real advantages to this feature. The first is that there is much more drag surface available in the lever drag set up. The traditional stack of quarter sized fiber washers is replaced by one (in some cases two) large disc of drag material giving you more surface area and superior heat dissipation. That’s a good thing. The other advantage isn’t as obvious and isn’t really a drag issue. In a traditional reel like the Penn 114, when you take the reel out of gear that handle and spool are disconnected. Let’s say you are drifting bait for tuna, or trolling slowly with live bait. The reel is out of gear with the clicker on. When a fish picks up the bait and starts to run your spool is spinning, at speeds up to 60 miles and hour if you’re lucky enough to encounter a yellowfin or wahoo. At some point you decide to set the hook and put the reel into gear. At that moment one gear that is spinning at 60 and another gear that is stationary are asked to come together. This is not a good moment if you are a gear. I’ve been surprised over the years at how strong the traditional Penn reels really are, putting up with dozens of these stress moments without failing. At some point they do fail, and if that point happens to coincide with your first really big tuna or marlin, it ain’t a happy time. With lever drag reels the spinning and non-spinning sections of the reel are brought together gradually, ramping up the drag pressure rather than a forced meshing of gears. Gotta be stronger and more trouble free. Lever drags have gotten more and more popular the last 10 years and all of the major manufacturers have brought out products in smaller and smaller sizes using this superior design. When you get around to upgrading your 113H, which you may never feel the need to do, you should take a look at the products available in this class of reel. Back to your big caliber reel. So the single piece frame and lever drag make sense and are improvements. Better bearings, stronger handles and such make every bit of sense also. It’s when you get to two speed options that it gets a little cloudier for me. When two speed reels hit the market it seemed important to have this feature. It’s more! It’s better! I purchased a couple awhile back, and had one of my single speed reels modified to 2 speed. Over the years it dawned on me that while the 2 speed feature has some very specific instances where it comes in handy (very large fish, and when trying to reel in large fish on a very rough day when you can’t stand up), for most fishermen it may well cause more issues than it resolves. If you think about a reel, it is a storage device. The drag can help you to tire the fish and allows you to fish for fish stronger than your line weight, but when recovering line it is mostly a matter of your physical technique. By lifting the rod up and reeling down you are able to recover line and store it on the reel, but the lifting, the work, is mostly done by your body. While I know that many of you may well differ with me on this, I think that 2speed reels are basically a waste of money, because the times that you really need the feature are so seldom. I see guys furiously shifting their reels up and down, when what they should be doing is playing the fish. They are more expensive and it’s just another thing to break. You might make a good argument for 50 wides or 80 wides in 2speed if you do a lot of long range fishing but otherwise, avoid.

As long as we’re disagreeing already, let’s get into brand names. Penn, Shimano, Accurate, and Avet seem to be the big names on the west coast. I’ve always used the Penn Internationals. They have steadily updated their design over the years, and build a very solid product. You can get them serviced, find parts on your own, and they don’t break if maintained. When Chris and I were having a “conversation” recently about which 50w reels to buy I kept coming back to the fact that Penn Internationals had never let me down, not in 20 years. I have nothing bad to say about Shimano equipment. I have owned many of their reels over the years, both large and small, and aside from some picky details I think that they are both a good value and a very reliable piece of equipment. Many of our best fishermen swear by them. They have the most generous and friendly customer service people and policies in the business. The Accurate reels remind me of jewelry, they are beautiful, precise pieces of advanced engineering and nowadays appear to be very well executed from a manufacturing point of view. But like jewelry they are very expensive. I have purchased all of my Internationals used, on ebay and at garage sales, and I can’t find a way to justify paying 5 times as much for a reel that is probably more refined but can’t offer a solution to a problem that I don’t have. As for the Avets, they have stormed onto the west coast market in the last 5 years and have many devotees. I owned one of the early ones, and it had a myriad of design, material, and assembly problems. To their credit, Avet has addressed these issues and appears to be making a very good product at a very reasonable price, and they come in purple. Each of these manufacturers has loyal customers who won’t buy anyone else’s product, and that says a lot. The competition between them will keep the technology advancing and hopefully keep the prices in line, and that’s a win for you.