Freshwater Fishing Tackle Beginners Guide - The Spinning Reel

The Freshwater Fishing Gear Beginners Guide continues with "The Spinning reel." This series of articles was designed to help remove the fright of purchasing fishing gear from the novice angler.

We will cover a wide range of fishing gear from reels, rods, lures, baits, jigs, lines, and knives. It is hoped by the end of the series your can go online and buy the right tackle and within budget.

We began our review on freshwater fishing reels with the spincast reel, the best reel for beginners and the infrequent fishermen. This review will cover the spinning reel, and will continue with the baitcast reel and lastly an article on the fly fishing reel.

Spinning reels come in numerous forms and are utilized by kids, casual hobbyist and enthusiastic sportsman alike. When it comes to fishing reels, the spinning reel is the most well-known and popular. It is chiefly used for light weight fishing and dominates in terms of performance and simplicity of use.

The spinning reel is perfect for landing just about any fish out there; whether it is racing rivers, local creeks, mountain lakes or your favorite hidden pond. You can catch small pond fish such as bluegills, catfish, trout and bass; it doesn't matter, if you have strong enough line your spinning reel will land the fish.

The spinning reel has a very distinctive look with the large wire bale around the open-faced line spool and a line roller to help hold the line as you recover it. The reel handle or "crank" can have either one or two knobs, both work equally well at cutting line friction as you retrieve it, with little or no snarling. This type of reel is mounted on the underside of the rod.

There are few drawbacks to the spinning reel. It is only limited by the size of your fishing line, when compared to the baitcast reel it holds less line. This means you will need to use a smaller, lighter line to insure you have enough line to get to the point you want. The lighter the line the smaller fish you can land. The spinning reel is also not as accurate at casting as the baitcast reel

A excellent example of spinning reel is the "Abu Garcia Cardinal 500ALBi Spinning Reel." Priced at under $70 is a durable and dependable reel with a rigid body and reel stem cover made from corrosion-resistant aluminum alloy.

Look for our review of the baitcast reel in the next article in the continuing series "Freshwater Fishing Gear Beginners Guide.