Hey! What's up? You are here today with Nick, the Informative Fisherman. Today, we are going to be discussing spinning reels on how to use them and how to understand them from ultra-light reels to your medium-sized bass reels, all the way up to your surf-casting reels.
Okay, first off, let's discuss the basic parts of a spinning reel. Naturally, you have your handle, okay, which you reel it with and this is your bail, this wire, right here going over. Now what this is for is this is to release the line, just before you are going to cast. So what you would do is you would trap the finger right there against the line, use your finger to pinch the line up against the actual rod and you will open the bail with your thumb and if you want to cast, you make that momentum backwards and as you are going forward just like a whipping motion, you release the line with your finger.
Now, once the line hits the water, you can either close the bail with your hand or you could start to reel and the bail should automatically close. Now no matter what size of the spinning wheel, all the parts are virtually the same. You have your handle and this is you drag up here. Now and then you will have them on a spinning reel on the bottom and what a drag is for, is for when a fish is pulling hard on your line, you want your reel to be able to feed him some line so it doesn't break it if you are using lighter strength line. And by adjusting it all the way to the left and you can feel it getting looser when you pull on your line, this is going to save you from breaking off with the fish.
Now so you have really strong line on, on a much bigger reel so you are using 25-pound test and you are catching 15-pound fish and you don't want to give them any drag, you can tight it up real tight towards really difficult to pull drag off of there but learn your drag. It's very important.
Okay, now here we have a surf-casting reel which is much larger, it's a much larger spinning wheel than what I have been showing you before with your ultra-light and your medium-sized spinning reels. Now these guys work exactly the same, you drags right here on the top. So, remember to learn to use your drag. See that's given there, when I tighten it up, it doesn't want to give. Your bail is right here on top so I have to give it a little bit of wind here. Pinch the line against my finger, open the bail, make my momentum backwards and as I am going forward in a whipping motion, I release the line. I can either start to reel to close the bail or I can manually close it with my hand; either way is fine.
Now when you purchase your spinning reel, you need to understand exactly the size of the spinning reel you are getting. If you are getting a little tiny one, the line compasity is going to be much smaller and you are not going to be able to cast strong line. So for example here, as you can see on the line compasity here, right on the side of the reel, it will show you, you have 2 pound test and 165 yards so you can get a lot of yardage, but it is extremely light line. So you are going to be wanting to catch really small fish, if you are going to use that lighter line.
As you can see further up 4 pound test at a 105 yards, 6 pound test is 60 yards. So your line compasity on your reel is very important to pay attention to. So I'll show you another close-up of the much larger reels and you can see how the line compasity is going to change.
Okay, now here is a close-up of my spinning reel for surf-casting which is the very large one. Now as you can see here, it says 20 pound test at 240 yards. So it's really strong line and quite a bit of yardage. That's something you wouldn't be able to pull off with using one of those little tiny reels, because you have to understand the larger the reel, the bigger the line compasity and how stronger test you can use.
Okay, great! Now that you have a better understanding of your spinning reels, next thing you need to know is what's setup you are going to use to target which type of fish, whether it's a small type of pen fish, needed the bluegill or crappie and you want to use an ultra-light setup or you can even use a medium setup. Whatever one fits your preference a little bit better, you can go with the sensitive bite on this, if you are having a tough time filling them or a little bit less sensitive bite on the bigger setup or if you are going to target a little bit bigger fish, per se, like bass or trout, you want to use your medium setup type spinning right here, what maybe a line compasity that maxes out around 10-12 pound test or say, you want to tackle a monster.
You want to get out there at the beach or you are getting out there on a boat, and you want to pull in a big shark. You want to -- if you are going to want to use one of your surf setups here. Now the most important key thing is, if you are not purchasing a combo which means the reel comes with the rod and you are buying a spinning rod separate from the spinning reel. Here is your rod, here is your reel, these are separate items. This is not just a fishing rod, okay. A rod is just this piece; your reel is just this piece. The combo is the two pieces together.
Now, if you are buying the rod, on a spinning rod, the first eye is much larger and a taper is down to be very small. You'll know if you are purchasing the wrong rod, because the first eye will be small and towards the tip of the rod, the same eye will be about the same size. So that's a bait-casting rod, so you don't want that one. If you are purchasing the spinning rod that feels comfortable to you, the first eye and from the handle is going to be much bigger and it's going to taper down.
Okay, great! Now that I think that you guys have a better understanding of how to use your spinning reels and rod setups, so remember you just trap that line with your finger, open up the bail, momentum backwards, momentum forward, take your line off the finger, let it hit the water. As it hits the water you can either close it with your hand or begin reeling to engage the bail in a little bit closer.
I am your host, Nick, the Informative Fisherman, and we'll see you next time. Best of fishing!
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