I am out of the loop with Daiwa spinning reels these days so you will have to excuse my concentrating here on those from the Shimano and Penn stables, but over the last few years I have fished with a fair number of different spinning reels and I can’t help noticing over enough time with each one that they all seem to have their individual quirks as such. This is fine if you get to know these quirks and can allow for them, but I see too many complaints from lure anglers especially that so and so spinning reel is giving them endless wind knots and hassles and so on. Surely in this day and age this should not be happening? The odd dodgy casting style aside I might add…………..

I don’t believe that any company makes the perfect spinning reel for every single angler, but I honestly can’t think of a Shimano spinning reel in recent years that I have either owned or tested which has required me to to play around with those little plastic spacers to get a good line lay straight out of the box. I have wound braid onto all of them and the result has been what I would call a perfect line lay as per the photo above. If I think of this little Shimano Stradic 2500HG-FL spinning reel which I have been fishing with on and off for a year plus now, the two different braids I have used on it both went on with a perfect line lay, and I also didn’t give it a second’s thought about filling the thing right up with braid. I haven’t had even a single hint of a wind knot in my year+ of fishing with this reel. Shimano as a tackle company might well make little sense to a bass lure angler with the gear they don’t make available to us, but from a fishing point of view I hear very little line management complaints from Daiwa and Shimano spinning reel owners.

Now I don’t subscribe to needing to underfill a spinning reel and losing out on loads of distance like some anglers obsess about, but on the other hand I don’t understand why such a big fishing tackle company like Penn seems unable to make modern spinning reels that you can’t fill right up with braid like you can with a Shimano or indeed a Daiwa. There may well be other tackle companies in a similar boat here by the way, but please go back and read my opening sentence of this blog post. Note that the awesome Penn Slammer III 3500 is arguably my favourite spinning reel of the last few years and I think by now I know any quirks it might have, but we’re talking about a tackle company’s flagship spinning reel where if you’re going to cast lures into a headwind especially - instead of dropping stuff down on a boat - you need to know these quirks to get the best out of it. But is any tackle company going to sell you an item of fishing tackle and then say by the way, there are a few quirks you need to take into account to get the best performance?

I’ve had the Penn Spinfisher VI 2500, 3500 and 4500 reels through my doors here, plus the Slammer III 3500 and 4500, and I think only one of them didn’t need a bit of playing around with those little plastic washers to get what I would call a really good line lay straight out of the box. I have come to know this as one of those quirks with Penn spinning reels and because I’ve got a good way of loading and unloading braid nice and easily and quickly from a reel (check here), it’s no great hassle - but I still don’t understand why it should be like this. Surely their army of testers come back to them in due course and highlight any issues that need to be addressed? I haven’t had to mess around with any Shimano reels I can recall to get a perfect line lay out of the box, but because I know this about the Penn reels it’s become part of their thing if you like. I can’t do without the Slammer and I love fishing with it, so I accept that out of the box it’s most likely going to need a bit of fiddling around with. But what if you don’t know all this and you end up with line issues?

Pretty quickly I found what seems to be my ideal line level for a Penn Slammer III 3500 - as per above - but to get there it took a couple of wind knots when I first started fishing with this reel to make me realise that I was going to have to drop the line level. Now I wasn’t surprised because I had to do exactly the same thing with their Clash 2500 and Clash 3000 spinning reels, but why? When I found that perfect line level I honestly can’t recall a single line management issue since with my beloved Slammer III 3500, and this includes casting a lot of different hard and soft lures into strong headwinds - but again, what if you buy this reel and aren’t aware of this issue? Does a tackle company such as Penn say hang on angler, before you go loading up, you need to be aware of the correct line level for fishing the way you do? Not that I have seen.

I quickly found through trial and error again that the lovely little Penn Spinfisher IV 2500 needed a bi less line on it than the bigger 3500 and 4500 models for it to behave properly, and again I have to ask the same questions as above. I like how Penn put these different markings on the inside of their spools, but where are the detailed explanations on where you should be filling up to depending on how you tend to fish? It’s helpful how there are some diagrams on the reel instructions for how to adjust the line level if needs be, but I still have to come back to how most Penn spinning reels I have fished with over the last few years have all come out of the box requiring slightly different adjustments. What if you don’t know this?

I am not having a go at Penn by the way because I think they make some incredible spinning reels, and for all that any Shimano spinning reels I have used over the last few years have been “right” straight out of the box, you still don’t find a big tackle company like this giving you much help and advice say with maintenance and minor servicing and so on. Ask around for help on reel maintenance and you will get all kinds of different advice, so how about the tackle company saying do this and this because it’s the best way? Scroll down to the highlighted text here when I reviewed this awesome little Shimano Stradic 2500HG-FL and you will note how I had one minor niggle about the line roller seeming to get rid of any oil pretty quickly and get a bit raspy. Well I did what I said I was going to do and packing the line roller with this blue Penn Precision Reel Grease seems to have completely sorted this little issue out. Again though and bearing in mind that I have only fished with the one Stradic FL so far and I can’t compare to any others, where does the mighty Shimano say by the way dear angler, you need to treat the line roller on the Stradic FL differently to say the Twin Power XD C3000HG? Nowhere, and it’s only by trial and error and thinking about it that I have arrived at a solution.

I put this up on Facebook the other day: I've had a lot of messages and correspondence from anglers asking me when the 6'' OSP DoLive Stick will be available again, and especially the white ones. Don't shoot the messenger here and there are plenty of other lures out there that catch bass, but I have just found out that some fairly limited stocks of DoLive Sticks are indeed available again - including the white ones, if there are any left after my own order I might add! And because some people are going to ask me, the hook in the white DoLive in the photo above is one of these rather impressive BKK Titan Weedless hooks.

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Why can’t all spinning reels be filled right up AND come with a perfect line lay out of the box? What if you don’t know about the quirks of certain reels?

© Henry Gilbey 2023