We recently had an extended go - that blasted Amazon trip again - with an exceptionally light sample reel, the new Conflux:
https://www.confluxreels.com/
The reel is almost entirely CF, and it's extremely light compared to the average reel on the market. At only 105g unlined, it's under half of most other reels in the 7/8wt range, not to mention tanky reels like some of the old Tibors and Islanders. Full write-up here:
https://fall2023.ontheflymag.com/index.html?page=34#
I've always heard that you're supposed to balance your rig, but I've generally been skeptical. It seems like there's a broad range of what "balance" could mean, and as soon as you dive into the details, the conventional wisdom starts to look very shaky. Should it balance when the reel is unlined or fully lined? Let's say fully lined, since most of us wouldn't fish with an empty reel....okay, but you also don't fish with a reel where the line is completely spooled up. So should you strip half the line out and then weigh it? Most of the line? Only the first 30ft of line, in an attempt to align with AFFTA? Okay, but what if you're fishing a line that's 1.5x heavy?
It's actually kind of fun to start asking those questions right after somebody (usually in a shop or at a show) has just gotten done proclaiming (loudly and with authority)
exactly how it should be done. Most of the time it's immediately revealed that they've never given real thought to any of those points, and that whatever age-old wisdom they were invoking was nothing more than what somebody once told them....loudly and with authority.
I try not to embarrass my friends like that, especially if they're just about to make a sale to a customer who's probably going to fish once or twice a year anyway. Save that for the arrogant mansplaining blowhards who really deserve a dent, then shamelessly enjoy your
Schadenfreude.
I see that John W asked about the line early in the other thread, but it doesn't seem to have come up afterwards.
Me, I find that what the line weight is doing outside the rod tip is vastly more important for my casting than whether it's on the ground or on the reel, and that reel + rod balance can be changed dramatically by relatively incremental movements of my hand up or down the handle. As such, I'm inclined to write off reel weight as mostly unimportant for most practical fishing scenarios.....but I've enjoyed reading everyone's thoughts about how it might affect highly-technical casting sport situations. Interesting stuff, thanks for sharing!
Back to the Amazon experiment: like it says in the review, we made THOUSANDS of casts daily using rods with that light Conflux reel and all our heavier reels as well, switching back and forth multiple times each day. I honestly couldn't notice any difference whatsoever that could be attributed to reel weight, and neither did Austin. Line taper, line speed, length of line being carried, hand position....all of those things seem vastly more important.
I'm inclined to think that reel weight REALLY matters in three situations...
- if you're packing for a flight /trip with extreme weight restrictions
- if you're standing on a saltwater skiff all day waiting to cast, in which case a heavier reel is actually better - as Nate explains here:
....and as you've surely noticed, none of those have much to do with casting.