I promised last month to tell you more about my barbel float fishing tackle and as I have already covered the rod I will tell you about my choice of reel. I am a great fan of centrepin reels and one of my failings in this sport is that I tend to choose swims that allow the use of a centrepin rather than those likely to hold fish.
A centrepin reel is a wonderful tool on which to play fish and it allows you to gain line even when the rod is fully bent into a fish, because there are no angles and gears to create friction. It also enables you to trot a float in fast water with much more control than any other reel.
In the last few years I have swapped from the traditional centrepin which used the point of a small screw on the revolving drum making contact with a central pin mounted on the back plate to minimise friction and allow the drum to revolve freely. This mechanism has been replaced in modern reels with sealed ball bearing races which in my opinion give a maintenance reduced operation.
My favorites are the “Purist” series made by JW Young and marketed by Masterline. Anyone who watches John Wilson’s television series will be familiar with these. At about £250 a time these are beyond the budget of many anglers, but a firm called Lewtham Engineering produce cheaper centrepins that don’t look as pleasing but work just as well.
Now for the controversial bit - I wind the line onto my centrepins backwards so that the line comes of the top of the drum rather than the bottom. When reeling in I seem to be winding backwards and this took a bit of getting used to when I first started. The main reason I have gone to all the trouble to learn this technique is that it allows me to control the amount of line I give a fish and the pressure that I release this line, with the thumb of my right hand. This frees my left hand to hold the landing net or support the rod above the butt.
I hold the rod with my right hand very close to the reel and use my thumb to put pressure on to the top of the spool of the reel. A fish taking line causes the spool to revolve anti-clockwise and because of the way our hands are designed I can maintain or vary the pressure exerted by the thumb because the spool is revolving away from it. If the spool revolved clockwise as it would if the line were wound on in a traditional manner, then the edge of the spool would push my thumb up and away from it and I would lose valuable control.
The second reason for this technique is that my thumb prevents line being blown off the edge of a spool when I am trotting a float and not watching the reel revolving. This is particularly important as I always remove the manufacturers fitted line guard as it prevents me from performing a “Wallis Cast” and I chose to use the word “performing” carefully as this cast is difficult to learn. I will try to explain it elsewhere, one day, perhaps?
I’ll tell you about my choice of line next month.
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