Reels
I’ve really gone back and forth on reels when it comes to two-handers. I used to use big Hardy Marquis Salmon reels for all of my spey casting. The Salmon #3 was my first spey reel and it gave me great service for several years. I was so pleased with it that I purchased a #1 and #2 as well. Despite the fact that these reels were sort of big and clunky, they had a certain air of nostalgia to them, and since I was a new British Columbia steelheader, I felt that I needed these reels in order to add legitimacy to my pursuits. All of the classic steelheaders that I knew about or met used Hardys (especially old Hardys) so I had to have them too, allowing me to take myself seriously as a steelheader. The Hardys worked pretty well, although they were prone to typical Hardy problems of the time—reel handles that would bind and pawls that would flip over when a fast running fish took off. Still, all of these things were fixable, and the Hardys were cool because only a Hardy sounds like a Hardy.
Then I got interested in modern hi-tec reels. They were sleek and sexy and expensive and at the time all of the new wave of serious steelheaders were fishing them. The first one I got was a Ross Saltwater V. This seemed like a giant reel to me (even compared with my Marquis Salmon #3) but it was incredibly light and held miles of backing plus my longest custom spey lines. Then I started to fish Loop Traditional reels and loved them because it was so unusual to fish a quiet reel. The Loops kind of purred when a good fish ran, whereas the Hardys howled. Then I went to the Loop Evotec reels with “low volume” clickers and liked the fact that I could hear the reel but at the same time the splash! of a jumping fish.
What you need in a spey reel and what you want in a spey reel may be two very different things. In general hi-tech breaking systems are not critical unless fishing for chinook salmon. A well-made spring and pawl reel with sufficient capacity will get the job done for you. However, you might like the idea of a hi-tech brake package and ultra modern looks, in which case you will select one of the many top quality modern spey reels available.
Another thing that I’m thinking about is arbor size. Large arbors of course are all the rage for speys these days but in order to handle the capacity needed for many spey lines the reels themselves get kinda huge. In fact it is rather humorous to me these days that I look at my Ross Saltwater V--which at one time seemed like a huge reel to me--as rather puny compared to say the big Loops, Waterworks or Nautilus. While the large arbors prevent lining coiling, I wonder how long they will remain popular compared with the somewhat more compact standard arbor or mid arbor reels.
The popularity of various reel sizes will of course fluctuate with interest in various line styles. Long belly lines require more capacity, even with gel-spun poly backings; the shooting head lines currently popular require less capacity, so relatively smaller reels. Interest in shooting head style lines has also led to increasing interest in rods in 11ft – 13ft lengths. Some anglers find these rods easier to manage than the longer rods, and their shorter lengths better compliment the shorter head length of shooting head lines. Giant reels are not necessary to balance these rods, and smaller reels are usually lighter than larger ones, so the combination of lighter lines, rods and reels is a really nice set up to cast and fish over a long day on the water.
I wonder where our current fascination with extremes in line styles (extended belly one season, shooting heads the next) will lead us in reel designs. Five years from now, will we have settled on a particular head length that will lead reel makers to produce one or two standard reels for two handers? Or will the spey community remain ever inquisitive?
Over the next decade I think speycasting will once again become more regionally focussed in its approach to tackle selection. In the past—with some overlap of course—we have seen the spey world divided up as follows:
The UK and Canada: traditional spey methods
Scandinavia: shooting heads and the underhand cast
The Pacific Northwest USA: shooting head methods
New areas of spey interest are emerging, particularly the Great Lakes steelhead and salmon and Eastern North American Atlantic salmon, and these will initially adopt currently popular spey methods before adapting them and even developing their own unique approaches. Right now we have the “cult of the caster” happening in the spey community, and we often forget that the speycast is a means to an end, that end being fishing. Ultimately I think anglers will settle on line systems that are functional and promote ease of casting and fishing, and the popularity of these line systems will promote particular reel styles. As long as we have big saltwater species we will always have reels with enough capacity for the big spey lines, and some of the classic traditional tackle companies like Hardy will likely always make reels that will support the long belly line casters, but I think the preference for functional line systems with ultimately lead spey anglers to zero in on relatively smaller and lighter reels.
