Cheapskate me.... Okuma Reel

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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