A Perfect Closed-Face Trotting Reel

Mark Wintle with a winter tench

A perfect closed-face trotting reel. There, said it. Unfortunately, unlike the open face reel this is much more difficult to design, and I’m sure that a fair few designers at ABU, Daiwa, Shakespeare and others have burnt plenty of midnight oil trying to achieve it over the years. By bringing in the discussion points and adding my own observations it might just be possible to make progress. Cost is going to mitigate against this dream ever reaching the river bank far more than with the open face reel but as the design exercise is interesting let’s proceed.

What I’m going to do is try and come up with a radical new design.

Let’s start with the history again to see what we are up against. I too owned first an ABU 505 (designed in the Sixties), then the slicker, faster ABU 506 (introduced 1970) before switching to Mitchell Matches in the mid Seventies. The 506 had an extraordinary run due to its ease of use despite its shortcomings on faster rivers but retained a strong following on slower Midland’s rivers such as the Thames and Warwickshire Avon. Other manufacturers tried to crack the market including Crack (many years since I’ve seen one), Shakespeare, Daiwa and DAM. There was at one time a revival of original ABU 507’s with the larger dimensions improving line lay set against increased weight, and in turn ABU re-introduced a far East copy that never really made the grade. I still have my ABU 506 and a much later Daiwa that is okay for night fishing at close range (as tangle free as it gets).

Notwithstanding the Contact 4000 which is hardly flying off the shelves in this country (wouldn’t mind a look at one from a design point of view) there is little that is any great improvement on the 506 that had a good rather than brilliant design though excellent build quality unlike the later Clive Smith/Ken Giles Shakespeare offering. If you must have a new closed face reel the choice is between Daiwa, ABU and Contact (assuming you can find one). The current Daiwa and ABU offerings are slightly updated versions of the 506 so there has been no great progress in thirty years.

Mitchell Match

Pro’s

• One handed operation
• Excellent pickup when trotting – no moment of slack when a bail is engaged
• Relatively tangle-free and easy to use
• Good in windy/rainy conditions

Con’s

• Narrow spools and lots of friction on the line often leading to line-bedding and jerky line payoff
• Poor line lay
• Not especially fast retrieve nor very smooth
• Tend to wear out quite quickly
• Crude gearing
• Tend to be heavy and weight difficult to reduce
• Poor drag – only Daiwa to my knowledge have attempted a rear drag, the handle drags never seemed to work hence the usual modification of taking out the anti-reverse on the ABU 506
• Best suited for slow water/short range
• Cloned design; in other words most offering have been very similar with very little progress in more than thirty years
• Handle needs looking at

Let’s re-examine the criteria for the open face reel but bias it towards closed face.

Reach and reel stem length

Abu 500 Series of Closed face reels

Retrieve rate

Due to the winding cup design and the vastly increased friction that results, the reel designers have compromised retrieval rates against usability and settled for about 25 inches/64 cm per turn. Challenge number two is to reduce the line friction so that the retrieval rate can be increased to 30/32 inches per turn.

Spool size/width/length

The width is fine but somehow we have got to increase the length of the spool to about the same as the ideal for the open face reel – 18mm from 11mm. Changing the spool size is easy – it’s getting the other aspects that work with this that are more difficult.

Line lay – spooling

Having altered the dimensions of the spool that was narrow for good reason – you don’t need sophisticated line lay and the pickup cup is kept to manageable dimensions we immediately get the challenge of improving line lay to prevent the line bedding that has always been the bugbear of closed face reels. As line lay mechanics takes place in the gear box of the reel and such mechanics as already available changing from the old one movement back and forth per handle turn to proper line lay is not that difficult. It might add weight but that’s another hurdle to be tackled later. Challenge number three is to put in a more sophisticated line lay – the really difficult part is transferring the motion from the gearbox to the spool.

Tangle free operation and instant pickup

Preventing line getting behind the spool. Challenge number four is to get the tolerances tight and the chenille skirting effective enough to prevent line getting behind the spool. One fault with poorer quality closed face reels has been line escaping past/trapped by the pickup pin.

Winding cup mechanics

Reducing friction on the winding cup. Take a good look at the winding cup. The pickup pin has to be some distance from the lip of the cup, consequently the line not only has the friction of going around the pin but also an inch or so of the side of the cup and the lip of the cup. The pin release mechanism by front push button is a superb example of brilliant design – simple and effective, and yet the pin is in the wrong place. Challenge number five (and this is the really tough one) is to design a way for the existing mechanism to trigger a pin placed much closer to the rim of the cup. Challenge number six is to have an effective roller in the pickup pin. I think the answer lies in some sort of double skinned winding cup so that the pickup release can operate outside the internal part swept by the top edge of the spool. This would enable the transfer mechanism to work out of sight and maybe reduce the external cover so that it is smaller. I warned you that we would need to get radical. Beyond the pickup roller another inbuilt roller for the cup edge designed so that it does not impede casting.

Durability

The ABU 505/506/507 never stinted on the quality of material yet there were three components that tended to wear fairly quickly. These were the pickup pin, the plastic pickup carrier and the spool mount (the sideways torque on the spool meant it wore out on the sides of each of the two pins). Challenge number seven is to design the gearbox, bearings, spool mount, and pickup mechanism such that tolerances are kept tight with smoothness, and by using top quality materials, to obtain the smoothness and durability expected from a modern reel.

Weight

The best previously achieved has been about 10.5oz, the larger ABU 507 was 13oz. Though the ideal is about 8oz, we might have to settle for about 10oz. The winding cup is surprisingly heavy, and by designing a double skinned winding cup the challenge will increase not diminish. Concentrate on the other challenges first because if, and it’s a big if, they were achieved this would be one hell of a reel, and a reel that good would let you forget that the weight wasn’t perfect. I’d still draw the line at 11oz.

Drag

About the only thing that a drag ever does on a close face reel is prevent over tightening on the winding cup – which is good enough reason to keep it. Daiwa’s rear drag is probably the best bet.

Conclusion

Perhaps I am aiming at the moon, but if we keep telling manufacturers what we really want we shall surely get it – eventually. As for price, we are looking at some difficult and high quality engineering so if it could be produced the price would be at least £ 100 and probably more. A final comment on closed face reels must come from the angler I personally rank as the all-time greatest – Dick Walker. Walker was given a reel to try, played a carp for an hour, landed it, cut the line, took the reel off the rod and threw the reel into the centre of the lake, vowing never to use one again.

Postscript to A Perfect Fixed Spool Trotting Reel
Reconditioned Mitchell Matches are sometimes available from Reel Care, Southampton – 02380 777232, who also provide servicing/resuscitation/spare parts for old Mitchells. They service my Mitchell Matches and I can recommend them.

Other comments – I’m sticking to my requirement for a top quality twist bustin’ bail roller and auto bail, and line pickup on open faced reels is sheer hard practice. Still, keep on trotting!