MASTERING THE MULTIPLIER
Think beyond brakes and tuning, here’s how to make your fishing much easier. It’s all about skill…
ILEARNED the hard way that skill is the one sure way to control a multiplier reel. Like most beginners I struggled to throw a bait into the water with the old Penn and Mitchell reels. Backlash after backlash, snap-offs, lost baits and scorched thumbs were the price an angler had to pay.
The only option was to use a fixed spool of some kind, either the conventional Mitchells and Intrepids, or Alvey and Orlando sidecasters that looked and handled like frying pans.
Thank heavens I stuck with mastering a decent casting technique, for when competence eventually arrived, it set me up for a lifetime of being able to cast and control just about every revolving spool reel I’ve come across – multipliers of all shapes and sizes, all the way down to wooden Scarborough drum reels. In the long run, mastery of anything boils down to hard work.
I have difficulty in convincing modern anglers that simple reels such as the Mitchell 602AP that the late Terry Carroll, of Zziplex, and I used to set British casting records, along with the equally basic Penn Surfmasters and Squidders, can top 200 yards with no more risk of backlash than to be expected with the latest highly tuned CT super-reels.
The big downsides were fragile spools and slow retrieve, those being the main reason I eventually switched to the Abu Ambassadeur 6000C. It certainly cast farther and more easily on the field, but distance-wise there was little advantage on the beach.
My first Abu 6000C was the only reel I ever modified for the beach, and that involved nothing more complicated than replacing the level-wind with a solid crossbar. I ran the reel with 3-in-1 oil in the bearings and a single centrifugal block, and I’d still be using it today had I not left in on Felixstowe beach. I wonder who found that one?
“The big downsides were fragile spools and slow retrieve, those being the main reason I eventually switched to the Abu Ambassadeur 6000C”