My Very First Fishing Reel… and a few after
My very first reel was a Zebco 606 I got for Christmas as a kid. It was great for a long time, until one night it just wore out fighting a big catfish sometime after midnight at Painted Rock Lake. I landed the fish, and went right back to sleep with my rod laying in the sand next to me. In the morning I found that the rivets that held on the metal foot, had worked loose, and the body had cracked. Maybe somebody stepped on it, but I don’t think so.
Soon after that decided I liked spinning reels better than spin casters. A lot of the same issues, but I could see them. When I discovered skirted spinning reels I thought I’d found the perfect machine.
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The
Curly Buzz Frog Went Thru Three Versions Before it Was Right
ITS RIGHT, and now there are FOUR sizes available of VERSION 4 |
At some point we were in a Yellow Front store in Prescott Arizona that was going out of business, and they had everything marked way down. I picked up a Daiwa 250RL spinning reel. That thing was a beast. It caught everything from baby bluegill and tiny stream trout on 4-6 pound line to 12-15 pound stripers on 12lb line.
I had some old school bait casters by then, but it wasn’t until about 20-25 years later I got my first “good” bait caster. A Shimano Curado 200B. I don’t think I still have it (I might) but two of my favorite bait casters today are almost that old. A pair of 200BSF reels I got shortly after the 200B.
Today I use different reels for different things. I don’t use a push button spin caster much, but I do own a few. They work just fine, but I’m more dialed in to spinning rods for anything light to medium, and bait casters for most things medium to extra heavy. Sure a 733 would be fine for catfishing (if I did much of that) but the last few times I did catfish I used a pair of Penn 209 reels. Not particularly fast, but plenty of cranking power for anything I’m likely to catch in fresh water and a fair bit of saltwater.
| TWO GREAT BAITS WITH
A COMMON BEGINNING The current RFG and the RFLT are 4th and 5th generation descendants of the original RFG. |
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 https://www.cncmolds.com/webstore/soft-plastic-bait-molds/curly-tail-baits/rfg-ribbed-flipping-grub-1-cavity-or-6-cavity |
 https://www.cncmolds.com/webstore/soft-plastic-bait-molds/creature-baits/rflt-1-or-6-cavity |
I did run across a pair of push button spincaster combos cleaning up in my dad’s shop a few months ago. Brand new. Still had the cards stapled around the rods. A buddy and I decided to head out for an afternoon of bank pounding. Running and gunning down the canal bank. We always have a personal 3-dollar bet. First fish, most fish, biggest fish. I asked him if he wanted a challenge. He could use any rod in the truck, but if he met a one of the three challenges using one of those spin casters it was double. He went for it, so we started flinging baits on those new/old pistol grip spin casters. I would have smoked him, but sadly mine had some bad line. Given the layer of dust on them when I picked them up there is no telling how long they had been out there in the shop. My buddy managed to catch the first fish on his spin caster, but I finally gave up after my third break off and switched to another rod with good line. I managed to catch the most and the biggest, so it turned out to be a tie. He had so much fun with that rod that afterwards he asked if he could buy it from me. Of course I gave it to him. He still brings it with his other much better high dollar rods when we go out.