Taking a Break at River's Edge (SwittersB~PP)
More often than not, you are fly fishing and suffer a tangle of your rigging. The tangle has to be re-rigged and the problem is at the tip of the rod or leader. The angler sets the rod down reel first and often onto a hard surface (rocks). Aside from the cosmetic damage of abrasion to the reel, there is a bigger problem that can cause serious damage to your reel: the reel hits the surface with enough force (it does not take much force) to bend the outer rim of the reel’s spool and crimp that inner slot that fits against an inserted flange that helps stabilize the spool to the reel housing. What results is either a reel that will not turn or turns with an intermittent grinding.
This is a very hard ding to fix and most people don’t have the machinist capabilities to return the reel to normal. Given the price of reels and spare spools, you might want to pause and look where you are about to set that reel down. You will hopefully avoid the grit, abrasion and dings that cause serious damage to your reel.
Reel apart exposing spools inner rim and reel housing (Loudog Pic~My Text added) SwittersB
