The Okuma Reel Is as you found out, not a bad reel for the price.
When the reels came out in the early 90's I wouldn't even consider them.
Since then the quality has come a long way.
Good Luck with the reel, and I hope you catch the "The Big One".
Brad Bohrer
"Bob La Londe" wrote in message
...
Ok, first off I have atleast a couple thousand dollars worth of high
quality reels for bass fishing (Quantrum Accurists & Shiman Curados (And
Super Free models) along with a few others) so I am not being cheap just
for the sake of being cheap.

I went on a quest to find a reasonable price fly reel for 7-8 weight for
bass fishing. In the local sporting goods store, Sportmen's Hide-A-Way,
(not much fly gear guys, sorry) the owner is a friend of mine. A sales
rep from one of the distributorships was visiting and Harold (the owner
and a nice guy) gave me the go ahead to order some stuff for my own use.

I sat down with the sales rep and flipped through lines of reels he
carried. I wanted something decent, but to be honest this is something I
might use heavily for a week and then not pick up again for a couple
years. They carried the Scientific Angler line , but at $129 and up
retail it was a little more than I wanted to spend for a reel that might
get occassional use. I did want something with an adjustable drag. even
though I am used to controlling the line by pinching it under my last two
fingers I have never caught bigger fish on a fly rod before. Well I have,
but not fly fished. I used to have an old flyrod that I replaced the
first two eyelets with bigger spinning eyes and used a light spinning reel
on for dabbing minnows into holes.

Anyway, we found the Okuma Sierra S7/8 for a retail of 39.95. I was
skeptical of any reel that cheap just as I would be if it were a
baitcasting reel. There wasn't much description in the flip sheets the
sales rep had, but he said I'ld have no problem returning it through
Harold if it wasn't satisfactory.

It arrived last week and at first glance I was disappointed. It seemed a
little on the small side for holding a lot of line. Particularly for a
reel intended for a 7/8 weight fly line. That was were my disappointment
ended. It has an easy to adjust drag. A little jumpy (which is expected
from a cheap reel) but not horrible. I used a piece of tape to spin a 30
yard weight forward fly line onto the reel just to see how much space was
on the reel. It is deceptive. It doesn't have a huge amount of space for
backing, but there was some. I stripped the flyline off to put on my
backing. I spooled on between 30 and 40 yards of backing and spooled the
flyline back onto the reel. There was still a little space, but not much.
Better than I expected from first glance at the reel though. I doubt I
would feel comfortable fight big fish in open ewater on this rig, but I
think I found a cost effective reel for the application I plan to use it
for.

After I had it spooled up I cranked the drag down tight and riped line off
by hand to burn in or deliberately glaze the clutches slightly and it
smoothed it out quite a bit. Not as smooth as the drag on a Shimano
Curado, but not bad for just under $40.

I'll give you guys a real (reel) world performance review when I finally
hook up a fish or two using this reel.
--
Bob La Londe

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