Surf Casting Reels

I thought I'd do a little article on the different casting reels and what I see to their greatest advantages. I'll start off with the spinning reels, as there seems to be a little controversy over the spool size and design. I'll mention a couple of different reels here which will be the Daiwa 9000 and the Penn 9500ss. Some have stated that the bigger the spool the further it will cast and this is totally wrong on the spinning reels. Just depending on the line diameter mostly as to the degree of difference it makes. The smaller spool or the smaller diameter of the Daiwa 9000 spool creates much less line slap than the 9500ss Penn. The more line slap on the eyes the less distance you'll achieve when casting and also the larger eyes on the rod will reduce line slap as well. Around here most of the spinning rods that are custom tied have very large eyes. 4" to 5" diameter bottom eye and tapering down to a pretty large tiptop. This increases casting distance as there is virtually no line slap except on the upper eyes. The 9500ss on these rods does very well but the biggest advantage the 9500ss has is the line retrieval and the durability of the reel. The Daiwa 9000 with about half the diameter spool will far exceed the casting distance of the 9500ss, however. This is using .47mm diameter line that I checked this on and the Daiwa was an average of 30 to 40 ft better distance when using my sleeper cast. The Penn's distance was right at an average of 580 ft where the Daiwa's average was right at 620 ft average. The only way to get the Penn to close this distance was to reduce the line size even more to .33mm and that increased the distance with the Daiwa also but not as dramatically. With .33mm line the Daiwa casting distance only improved by around 10 ft where the Penn's distance increased by about 25 ft. So if your cast sounds like a weed eater running up against a fence post when you release you need to reduce your line size, think about putting larger eyes on your rod, and maybe use the smaller spool design, if distance is important to you. 

Penn 9500ss

This is a similar reel to the older Daiwa 9000

This reel is an ABU Ultramag III and they don't make these any longer. I think the last ones were made in 1989 and they are the premier distance casting reels. No other reel can out-perform them in competition casting. This one has been converted for competition casting and I used one similar to this one to cast 258 yards in my second competition that I attended. If you have one of these they're in pretty high demand ... much less demand since the Penn 525 Mag T was produced but I don't think the Penn can cast further than these reels still yet. They broke the mold.

Abu's 7000cl Big Game. Faster retrieve on these reels than the 7000 c3 at 5.3:1 gear ratio and casting ability of the reel is identical to the 7000 c3 ... my average cast while fishing with these reels with a 6oz sinker and fairly large shad head is right around 175 yds. With no bait or very little bait I can hit right around 220 to 230 yds. The 7500c3 is identical to this reel except for the side plates are chrome instead of black. Chris Macey Magnetic Conversion Kits is also another option for the abu reels that you might want to check on. I plan on getting a couple of them pretty soon.