I know our old Pflueger reels were DD, got a No 1893L in my hand & we used the old Garcia 5000's later....and have a Pflueger Rocket too, which has a drag....

Might sound like a dumb question and maybe already asked & answered in the past, but what was/is the driving force behind DD ?....just more control in the fight vs mechanical drag ?....better casting or less working parts ?....

Been so long since using them I don't even recall what drove us to buying them, lol.....blistered thumbs are a given with any big fish, lol....

 

Knuckle busters were the first baitcast reels, going way back to the Kentucky reels first made in 1810. Those reels were made by silversmiths and made to order and only the rich could afford them, otherwise you fished for bass on a cane pole. Those reels didn't have a level wind so the braided silk line had to be guided by hand on to the spool. The level wind wouldn't come out until 1907 from Marhoff Reel Company in Kalamazoo, which was bought by Shakespeare in 1910, giving us the Shakespeare Marhoff which was made until 1962. That was the reel I learned on nearly 40 years ago, my grandpa swore by them and used them for everything from bass to salmon. He put me in the yard with a bucket and a bolt tied to the line and he would have me try to land the bolt in the bucket. I used to have his reels but lost them in a move maybe 30 years ago. When the Ambassadeur came out in 1952, it was the final nail in the coffin of the knuckle buster and most every baitcast reel since would be based on it.

Why would I want something technologically inferior? Easy, because it's fun and I like the challenge. This Isuzu is a Marhoff on steroids, with 6 ball bearings and a super light spool and handle. They're probably the only company still making them and their main draw is to bass and trout fishermen. The bass guys love them for top water baits. They're mechanically very simple, with the spool coupled directly to the handle. The Isuzu weighs in at 4 ounces which is about what a Langley Target weighs. The Langleys are fantastic reels, but they were bought by Zebco in '62 for their spinning reel technology. Zebco stopped making spinning reels when ABU licensed them the Cardinal reels, which were sold here as the Zebco Cardinal. The only relic from Langley that remained in Zebco's product line after that was the Langley De-Liar fish scale. Langley was known for making some of the very best reels while they were still around. They started off making aircraft components in WWII, and because of their experience in manufacturing tight tolerance and lightweight airplane parts, they turned to reels as the owners were avid fisherman.

 

Make yourself a thumbstall.

 

I'm not going after any really big fish with this one, probably gonna raw dog it lol

 

You know there's a lot of us, especially us Old-Timers that need to go to fishing school. There's so many options and everything is so complicated!

We need in education on reels, the difference between bait casting spin casting open face closed face action of the pole and yada yada all of it! When I was doing a lot of stream fishing in the Upper Peninsula, I needed a faster retrieving reel to keep up with the current while using spinner baits.

My father-in-law caught more than any of us because he just drifted a worm over a hole downstream fishing and caught more than any of us with our fancy MEPS spinners or flies!


Then you go into the tackle shop and you look at all the different tackle. None of it says what to use it for. It doesn't say use this size for this fish or use this in the big lake only or any of that. This color works best on a cloudy day. This color works best on a sunny day. This one works better in Clearwater. This one works better in dirty water. Nobody really explains this stuff simply without taking a huge deep dive into it. By the time you read all that you forgot anything you read!

Sure, would be nice if somebody would do a fishing 101 on here.

If I'm fishing for this, I want this kind of reel and why without taking deep dive into a 20 paragraph statement.

Same thing with artificial lures and hooks for that matter.

Scenario one bait fishing for large panfish with a crawler or a leaf worm. What size hook do I want? What kind of sinker? How do you fish for them? What bobber do you like the best or are you tight lining later in the summer in deep water?!

Number two. I'm bass fishing. What is the top rubber worm that you use? What kind of a liter or a swivel? Do you put any sort of ascent on it? How many sinkers and where.

What other kind of baits work good for bass hula poppers Bass 101

Then when it comes to spoons And spinners give us an education for inland lakes or streams.

What do you use for Pike? Do you troll.

Not sure if I'll ever get walleye figured out.

I'm just more of a pan fisherman in Land Lake but it's just amazing how much money gets wasted a year on people that don't know what they're doing even though it's small amounts of money
They buy Baits & lures and they don't know how to use them including me.

So I go back to my hook and worm....

Whatever happened to the good old crawler harness? Has that gone by the wayside?

Surprisingly, a few companies out there are still making baitcast reels the old fashioned way; no drag, no anti-reverse, all in the thumb. When I was a kid, I started out on baitcast reels with my grandpa's Shakespeare Marhoff reels, which were made from 1908 until 1964. I got pretty good using them and even did as much up until about 25 years ago, filling the spools with braided nylon and topping it off with a mono leader. The arbors on those reels were so small that loading with monofilament would surely result in a backlash as it was too springy. I no longer have my grandpa's reels as much of my tackle was stolen then, so I never went back to those old dogs.

Fast forward 25 years, and I start getting the itch for direct drive again and started looking at older Langley models, specifically the Target and Streamlite models which were made for fishing lighter baits. Wanting to do a BFS conversion, I saw that nobody made spools or coated line guides to work with modern braid. I went digging and found Isuzu Industries in Japan (unrelated to the auto manufacturer) who has been making them since 1952. Isuzu was one of the companies that sprung up post-WWII making clones of popular western reels for the Japanese market which they still do today. These days, their reels are their own designs and are much more refined than their western counterparts. Reels like the BC series started out as Ambassadeur clones and took on their own style and functionality in the future, becoming so popular now that their reels are mostly sold on a lottery system. Some exporters do resell Isuzu reels outside of Japan, and I was fortunate enough to get the opportunity to buy a DD310SSS, a modern direct drive BFS reel. I'll be pairing it with a Graywolf 5'4" 4-8lb and seeing what I can do. Being that it has been so long since I used one, there will be a learning curve and I can hopefully work my way up to fish like steelhead. My grandpa used to chase after them with his Marhoffs, probably resulting in a blistered thumb, but that's part of the experience.

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You know there's a lot of us, especially us Old-Timers that need to go to fishing school. There's so many options and everything is so complicated!

We need in education on reels, the difference between bait casting spin casting open face closed face action of the pole and yada yada all of it! When I was doing a lot of stream fishing in the Upper Peninsula, I needed a faster retrieving reel to keep up with the current while using spinner baits.

My father-in-law caught more than any of us because he just drifted a worm over a hole downstream fishing and caught more than any of us with our fancy MEPS spinners or flies!


Then you go into the tackle shop and you look at all the different tackle. None of it says what to use it for. It doesn't say use this size for this fish or use this in the big lake only or any of that. This color works best on a cloudy day. This color works best on a sunny day. This one works better in Clearwater. This one works better in dirty water. Nobody really explains this stuff simply without taking a huge deep dive into it. By the time you read all that you forgot anything you read!

Sure, would be nice if somebody would do a fishing 101 on here.

If I'm fishing for this, I want this kind of reel and why without taking deep dive into a 20 paragraph statement.

Same thing with artificial lures and hooks for that matter.

Scenario one bait fishing for large panfish with a crawler or a leaf worm. What size hook do I want? What kind of sinker? How do you fish for them? What bobber do you like the best or are you tight lining later in the summer in deep water?!

Number two. I'm bass fishing. What is the top rubber worm that you use? What kind of a liter or a swivel? Do you put any sort of ascent on it? How many sinkers and where.

What other kind of baits work good for bass hula poppers Bass 101

Then when it comes to spoons And spinners give us an education for inland lakes or streams.

What do you use for Pike? Do you troll.

Not sure if I'll ever get walleye figured out.

I'm just more of a pan fisherman in Land Lake but it's just amazing how much money gets wasted a year on people that don't know what they're doing even though it's small amounts of money
They buy Baits & lures and they don't know how to use them including me.

So I go back to my hook and worm....

Whatever happened to the good old crawler harness? Has that gone by the wayside?

I wholeheartedly admit, 99% of the tackle out there is designed to catch fishermen, not fish. We can make it as simple or complicated as we want. Some of the most successful fishermen I know keep their approach cheap and simple. Most of them are out looking for dinner and tend to use live bait and can easily catch many fish, while lure chuckers like me are cycling through the jewelry box finding something that works. For me personally, I like to make it more fun than anything, which led me to the more unconventional approaches I use. I'm in it for a good time and nothing more, and I'm enjoying it regardless of how hot the bite may be.

 

This thing is going to be sick for bushwhacking brookies. I spooled it with 50m of Seaguar Grandmax PE #0.8 (2lb diameter) and took it to Bishop Park early this morning and dialed it in with a Rapala CD1, got the brake set up so there's virtually zero fluff. With the Graywolf 4'10" it's super light and compact. I took a few shots with it next to my 2500C which is already a very small reel and it even weighs 3 ounces less.

 

You need to find yourself a nice slack water spot on the D River and cast for Walleye come fall with you UL setups. Many times I have brought my UL setup and caught walleye on them using 1/8oz jighead and crappie sized plastic. They put up a pretty good fish on the UL rod.

 

What's really interesting about this reel, it was designed for top water bass fishing with 12-16lb mono and 1+ ounce spooks, poppers, and wake baits. The spool shallow spool I got is also made by the reel manufacturer and they put it out for stream trout fishermen. It'll cover a variety of stuff.

 

Caught many bass and walleye casting for musky. Strangest thing ever caught casting for musky was burning in a spinner when something smacked it, was fighting hard, than half of fish came outta the water and was like WTF was that ? Fought hard, got it to the boat and it was a big ole Dogfish. Couldn't believe it, never seen one even attempt to jump. And to top it off, it bent the hell out of my fav spinner.

 

I use old level winds for my drop shot perch fishing. It’s what I learned on when I was 7.

 

That's one mean little bastard. Caught some rainbows and cutthroat when I was in Colorado. I had one guy ask if I was bass fishing lol