How light can a spinning reel actually be and are ever more lightweight reels the be all and end all?

I’m playing around with a sample 9’6’’ 7-35g lure rod here from a Japanese company that most of you will have heard of, and because lure fishing necessitates us holding the rod all the time I naturally strapped on what to me is a very lightweight spinning reel - my beloved little Shimano Twin Power XD C3000HG which weighs 250g when loaded with line. Of course I am interested to see what the about to be launched new Shimano Twin Power reels might be like, but damn they are going to have to go some to impress me more than my two and a half year old current version. I can’t divulge any more details about the rod and I don’t even know when or if it will end up on the market, but as I would expect, a lightweight and very “precise” lure rod should feel pretty damn good with a spinning reel on it around the size of a Shimano 3000 or indeed a 4000…………..

And it does, plus the rod itself is about as good a regular casting weight 9’6’’ lure rod I have ever had the pleasure of fishing with. I look at the 250g weight of my little Twin Power XD C3000HG which in the hands feels incredibly light and I then go looking at the quoted figures for say the newest Shimano Vanquish in the comparable C3000 size and on the Shimano Japan website it’s only 170g which is almost ridiculously light. The figures sound amazing and I got to have a few casts of this stunning little reel on a mate’s rod the other night, but I do also think that the quoted figures should really be “when loaded with line”. Come on, how do we actually go fishing without line on the spool?!

Anyway, because I have a serious thing in certain situations for the somewhat heavier Penn Slammer III 3500 spinning reel which weighs 403g loaded with line and is the same size as a Shimano 4000, I wanted to see what a heavier reel would feel like on the this rather lovely 9’6’’ rod. I hear a lot about how a rod and reel outfit “balances” or does not for some anglers, indeed I get asked a fair amount about which rod balances with what reel and how much feel you might get - and to be perfectly honest I struggle to answer because to me it’s so personal how an outfit sits in your mitts when you are actually out fishing. I get that some anglers want a lure rod and reel to sit on their finger as per above but I want to get the gear out fishing and see how the outfit feels after a few sessions of chucking a bunch of different lures out in a bunch of different conditions from a bunch of different kinds of locations.

I’ve got used to how this particular 9’6’’ rod and my Shimano Twin Power XD C3000H feels and of course it feels very different when I take this little reel off and screw the more substantial Slammer III 3500 on there. I could easily say no way because why on earth would I want to add weight to an outfit which might sit for many hours in my hands, but you know how I like trying different stuff out and regardless of how the rod and reel might feel I feel bound to the Slammer these days for my surf fishing especially. I love a lovely Shimano or Daiwa spinning reel as much as any of you reading this blog, but for all their claims of keeping saltwater out of the main parts of the reel, I have had, seen and heard of far too many instances of saltwater ingress killing these increasingly lightweight spinning reels for me to want to put them through my surf fishing especially.

And I do wonder from time to time whether spinning reels getting ever lighter is actually a good thing all of the time. You might have guessed that I have a fair few different lure rods passing through here, and it’s interesting how on some of them a certain spinning reel just doesn’t feel quite right - to me I must add. I don’t know whether the outfit “balances” on my finger, but I do know when an outfit for some reason just doesn’t seem to gel for me. The rod and/or reel might well be a couple of stunners on their own, but sometimes it feels to me as if the odd lure rod kinda needs a bit of a heavier spinning reel to feel just right in my hands. Rods and reels are personal things and I (regrettably) ended up selling the awesome Shimano Dialuna S96M 9'6" 8-45g because there was no point me owning it along with this Shimano Exsence Genos S90MH/R 9' 8-48g I have here, but I tried a few different spinning reels on the Dialuna and for whatever reason it was always the heavier Penn Slammer III 3500 which felt like the best match for the rod when I was out fishing, and not just in the surf. A really light rod which to me comes alive that bit more with a heavier spinning reel strapped to it.

I notice how on a lot of those inshore saltwater videos from the US for example that are all over YouTube, you see a lot of anglers putting what we would class as big and heavy spinning reels on some short 7’ and 8’ spinning rods. I grant you that they are often dealing with fish that are somewhat larger and more scrappy than our own glorious bass and as such I reckon you’d trash some of these little spinning reels we tend to use in a far shorter space of time, but it’s interesting what you can get used to if you go out fishing and give an outfit a bit of time.

Which is exactly what I have done with this sample 9’6’’ rod and a heavier/bigger Penn Slammer III 3500. My initial impressions because I’m used to the lighter reel on this rod were mmm, not sure about this, feels a bit heavier, but then I go fishing (blanking!) with the “heavier” outfit and in about fifteen minutes I’ve got a smile across my face because I am so loving how the bit of extra weight on the butt end of the rod I think makes the outfit feel rather bloody good. Better though? Not sure yet, but damn I like it, and I think back to the Penn Slammers that we have over in Kerry for our guiding work and how logic says that perhaps they are a bit heavy for say the Major Craft Triple Cross EU Custom 9’ 10-30g I take over for our clients to fish with if needs be - but the outfit feels great, and of course the reels take a whole heap of abuse and keep on smiling. We might be drawn to ever lighter spinning reels because the ever decreasing number of grams sound great, but is lighter always better and do some lure rods then not feel quite right because they might need a bit more weight on the butt end?

As an aside, how many of you listen to podcasts, because here's a recommendation if you do - "Hunting Warhead". This six part podcast deals with some troubling and at some points disturbing material, but it's an outstanding bit of investigative journalism that lodges in your head and really gets you thinking. You can find it wherever you get your podcasts from which for me is the brilliant Overcast app on the iPhone. You all have a good weekend and roll on the start of the Six Nations and England over in France especially on Sunday afternoon. A new dawn or a hangover from the World Cup?

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