I’m going to reverse my braid on a couple of spinning reels because why the hell not

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I’m going to reverse my braid on a couple of spinning reels because why the hell not – this is how I do it, plus how I load a reel up from empty

I tend to wake up pretty early anyway, but my pattern during this lockdown has become a roughly 4.30am wakeup and then come downstairs to read and work and listen to podcasts and so on. I sat in my chair this morning and watched it get light and if you didn’t know how mad the world currently was you’d have thought it was another perfect spring morning – only we can’t go fishing of course. I know it’s only April 1st and we are beset with what would be some pretty crap bass fishing conditions anyway, but in the current situation I am loving these achingly blue skies after a winter of such filthy weather. But none of this stops most of here thinking a lot about whatever fishing floats your boat the most. I’ve already had a bit of a chat with a couple of lure rods this morning, and yesterday some seriously sexy looking sample lures arrived which are physically winking at me as I type this blog post. Yep, the head ain’t quite right at the moment……………

And I got to thinking about more fishing stuff when I said good morning to a Penn Slammer III 3500 spinning reel which I handed out a thorough thrashing to in the surf last year especially. From time to time I do see a few anglers complaining online about the drag on the Slammer and how it’s slackest setting isn’t nearly as slack as say a Shimano and then that it’s too much drag for our bass fishing – to which I would politely say balls, and then balls again for good luck. Yes the Slammer doesn’t go as slack on the drag as a silky-smooth Shimano or indeed Daiwa, but if you honestly find that slackest setting to be too strong for our bass fishing then I would seriously suggest that you are having an unnecessarily long pissing about with your hooked bass instead of actually fighting them. Also bear in mind that over time the drag does loosen up on a Slammer and I am guessing that all the seals on the reel is what gives rise to a “tougher” drag – bring it on I say.

Anyway, I’ve got a 300m spool of the incredible Sufix 131 braid in bright green 18lb/0.148mm/PE#0.8 on this particular Slammer and I reckon this braid has been on there for around a year now. It seems to be in very good shape but with some colour loss as you’d expect, and whilst I don’t exactly need 300m of braid on a reel for bass fishing, it’s what is on there and I can’t go fishing but I want to do some fishing related stuff to keep my head in a relatively normal place – so why not reverse the braid to get at the new stuff way down the reel? Even if you factor in blasting something like a very long casting 28g Savage Gear Seeker out and then add a big side wind in which obviously rips loads more braid off the reel, there is still a lot of lovely Sufix 131 on this Slammer which is yet to see the light of day. Until today though.

Now I might be an accident waiting to happen with most DIY stuff, but with the amount of braids I end up playing with I have had to develop some kind of system for loading spinning reels in a relatively logical and speedy way – and it revolves around a battery powered drill and some of those larger and wider empty spools of mono. The steps below are what I do when I load up an new and/or empty spinning reel with a spool of braid, and bear in mind that any tension I need for winding the braid and backing either onto or back onto the reel is easily supplied because I use a line loader like the one above and here. I cannot do without this simple tool.

1. Wind spool of braid onto empty reel (I use the butt section of a spinning reel that has the butt ring on this bottom section of rod)

2. Wind mono backing onto the reel and on top of this braid to the level I want

3. Drill the mono off onto one side of one of those wider mono spools, secure the end down with sellotape (all I am using with the drills are various drill bits upon which I have wrapped tape to help secure them into the bigger mono spools, but thinking about it I should just buy another of those line loaders and secure that into the drill. What could possibly go wrong?!)

4. Now drill the braid off onto the other side of the (wide) spool, making sure not to go near or overlap any of the mono, secure the end of the braid down with sellotape

5. Put the wide mono spool into the line loader, suction it down, tie the mono to the now empty again spinning reel and wind it on

6. Attach braid to mono and then wind the braid on, now it’s the perfect level with the right amount of backing

But how about reversing the line so that you get at what is a lot of unused braid? You need one more step in there if you think about it, because you obviously can’t just wind the braid off a reel and then wind it back on to get a reversal – remember, even during these mad times 2+2 still equals 4. If you can simply wind the braid off one spinning reel and onto another reel to the right level then this is now obviously reversed, but in my situation I want to get that 300m spool of Sufix 131 off a Slammer (without a spare spool) and reversed onto the same reel. There is a little bit of mono backing on this Slammer as well.

So as per the crappy photo above you need to put another step in there to get the braid in the right sequence as such and back on your reel. I drill/wind all the braid and off the Slammer and onto one of those wide mono spools – leaving the mono backing on the reel – then using that line loader which I said I can’t do without I put that spool onto it, set the tension, and drill/wind all the braid onto a second old mono spool. I then attach the end of what is now the heavily used braid back to the backing and wind it all back onto my Slammer. Hey presto and if by magic you’ve now got the same line level as before BUT the braid at the top of the reel is nice and bright and unused. Now how’s that for some logical male thinking?

I’ve got this spool of brand new Varivas Avani Seabass PE [Si-X] Braid X8 which I told you about on Monday, and I want to put it on my beloved little Shimano Twin Power XD C3000HG spinning reel so it’s all ready for when we can get out there again – but I already have the rather bloody good Varivas Avani Sea Bass Super Sensitive Full Cast LS8 braid on this reel which although I have used it a lot, it’s still got loads of life left in it and I don’t want to just bin it. What I am doing to do is drill it off the TwinPower and onto one of those mono spools, and then from that spool I will drill it onto the original Varivas Avani Sea Bass Super Sensitive Full Cast LS8 braid spool which I have kept. This means that when I come to use this outstanding braid again I can wind it off the original spool and onto a reel, and it’s already reversed and ready for me to get at the newer line. Who said not being able to go fishing was going to fry a lot of brains?

The various reviews for most of the items of fishing tackle I have mentioned above can be found here on this website.

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