Wintle's World of Angling – Reels on Float Rods

REEL FITTINGS AND FLOAT RODS

Considering how vital a reel fitting is for a float rod, it amazes me that so many reel fittings on match or float rods are poorly designed. I’ll grant you that reel fittings have changed over the decades, and that they generally hold your reel securely on the rod better than ever. But, bearing in mind you’re holding the rod constantly, are they any more comfortable to use? And as you’re stuck with what’s fitted, can you do anything about it?

Old cork handle and reel fittings

Only one innovative designer has completely solved the problem, and to get his solution you must buy an ABU GARCIA Pure Performance rod fitted with a Grip-Fit© reel fitting. The man with the answer, and it’s so simple it’s a wonder no one thought of it before (or did they?), is Roy Marlow. Roy had previously developed the rod handles on Daiwa rods, including that famous flattened Arm-Lock handle (another excellent innovation), as well as taking the first steps towards improving screw down reel fittings. Before I describe how I overcame the limitations of some modern fittings, I’d like to quickly look at how we got to where we are today.

Go back more than thirty years and virtually all float rods had thick cork handles of 1 – 1¼ inches in diameter, with sliding alloy reel fittings. You simply pushed the fittings over the reel foot and hoped the natural springiness of the cork would hold the reel in place. As better plastics developed, these sliding fittings began to be made of tough plastic. These were more secure than the alloy ones though often quite bulky. At the same time, other designers were considering whether there might be a way forward with screw fittings. These originated on both fly rods and sea rods. On a narrow fly rod, such a fitting could be kept compact and light but those used on sea rods were far too bulky and heavy, being made of chrome plated brass.

Materials for the job

Fuji led the way in the late 80s using advanced plastics to give us the lightweight, neat fitting found on many top-class rods such as those from Normark and Carbotech. Others found different solutions, either the cheaper and cruder fittings found extensively on cheap rods today, or occasionally something very different such as a moveable fitting, again probably developed by Roy Marlow for Daiwa. In the last five years, we have the Grip-Fit and variations from Shimano and others seeking to improve the actual handgrip at the point the reel is attached.

So, what is the actual problem?

Quite simply, the diameter of the reel fitting has shrunk to around 0.7 inches or 18 mm. Whilst this enables you to reach the lip of the spool more easily, it may cause the muscles in the back of your hand to be put under strain. Furthermore, the round shape of the fitting is not necessarily ideal either; so simply increasing the diameter back to one inch (25mm) will only partially improve matters, and the rod still has a tendency to twist in the hand.

How did the Grip-Fit come about?

What Roy Marlow did was go back to ergonomic principles and change the shape of the reel seat so that it fitted the hand. He also managed to angle the reel seat slightly towards the butt ring giving two improvements; better line feed and improved reach to the spool lip. A number of reviews have appeared in the press over the last year; most have complimented the Grip-Fit though one or two felt that the fitting was a little bulky. We are back to the one size fits all problem.

Plasticene to model a fitting

Back in 1990, I bought a Normark Titan 2000. It was the first time I had encountered these new low diameter reel fittings, and I endured the discomfiture for a while before figuring a way to improve it. At the time, I had converted several rods to use the then current vogue method of attaching reels by using sections of bicycle inner tube (a method I’ve since abandoned). I must admit that taking a hacksaw to the screw-down front part of the reel fitting was brutal, but it enabled me to take a section of handle from an old fibreglass rod and glue it over the thin reel seat. After filing and shaping, I fitted two pieces of inner tube to hold the reel, and so it remains to this day. The problem with inner tube fittings is that the reel is not held particularly securely and may move, especially when playing big fish. And whilst the way I shaped the cork was an improvement, it was still a round shape.

In the last few years, I have obtained more rods with these reel fittings. Although I have got used to them to a certain degree the potential for improvement remains. Because I could see the shortcomings of the adapted fitting I had previously tried, I left the reel seats alone, but having looked hard at the Grip-Fit, I realised that it ought to be possible to develop my own add-on handle to the Fuji reel seats. I discussed these reel seats with Roy Marlow at the Go Fishing Show. With no prospect of an add-on adapter from Abu Garcia, it was time to design my own. I reckoned that by boring out some large wine corks and gluing them to the reel seat it should be possible to shape the fitting to fit my hand. Rather than one size fits all this was going to be custom-built!

Araldite the corks

Before gluing corks to the handle, I needed to know what I was trying to make. To get a good idea of the ideal shape, I used plasticene to model a fitting based on the shape shown by the Grip-Fit. The wonders of digital photography let me capture the shape from different angles to record the prototype. Having acquired some corks (harder than I thought as several shops that previously stocked them no longer did so, Yellow pages for home-brew kits), the next challenge was to bore some offset holes of the correct diameter. I made a cork borer from a short section from an old alloy landing net pole. It was short work to sharpen the edge with saw teeth and fix it in the vice. Then it was just a case of slowly cutting through the cork, maintaining the alignment as I did so.

I then Araldited the corks to the reel seat, leaving the part that the foot of the reel sits on completely clear. Once the glue had set it was then a matter of using a fine-toothed hacksaw to roughly shape the cork before finishing off with a file. The eventual result is not quite the same as the Grip-Fit, being slightly slimmer, but it fits my hand well. The shaping took just ten minutes.

The proof of the pudding is in the eating. I did this work at the end of March, and since then, I’ve had a chance to use the rod several times. I won’t get a chance to trot with it until June but I reckon it’s been a worthwhile exercise.

and then shape to suit

The improvement has been good enough that I’m going to convert a Normark Specimen Match next and take it from there.

I suggested to Roy Marlow that an add-on kit would be a Godsend but he smiled and said how he’d prefer us all to buy ABU rods.

There you have it. You can buy a ready made handle (on an ABU rod), put up with what you’ve got, or be brave and attempt my solution.

Next week: ‘Bite Detection’