A Reelly Good Idea

“Let me get this straight,” said Fishergarten’s attorney. “Your new Walmart spinning reel hasn’t even felt the weight of a fish yet, and you want to patent your own reel design?”
 
“Yes,” Fishergarten said patiently. Honestly, attorneys need everything explained before they’ll issue one of those treatises full of inexplicably, placed, commas,. “I sense an emerging market for two-stroke, internal-combustion-engine-powered fishing reels, especially among those who can’t cast very far nor afford boats.”
 
“Uh-huh,” he said.
 
Fishergarten had perfected her elevator speech.
 
“With enough line, you could conceivably stand on the

ocean shore and blast your bait clear into international waters. Of course we would need to use the spincasting type of reel with the cover on it, so you don’t end up with external combustion all over what’s left of your palm. Here’s the artist’s rendering. It needs tweaked a bit to be a schematic.”
 
“That,” he said, “is the worst abuse of PowerPoint I think I have ever encountered. Please pay on the way out. And don’t even think about using my name in that blog.”
 
Yeah, did he get his line in a nest. But it’s his loss, throwing away a chance to explore the aging Boomer generation and its anticipated rise in casts.
 
“You know that was costs, not casts,” said FisherSpouse. “And internal combustion power is not sportsmanlike.”
 
Plainly Fishergarten wasn’t getting any bites on her patent and decided to reel it in for now. Instead, she dived into reel anatomy, covering tension, bail, drag, crank and other surprisingly lurid terms.

She found ample writings on four freshwater types of reels (spincasting, spinning, baitcasting and fly) including this, this, this and the ever-handy “Fishing for Dummies.”
 
Ultimately, Fishergarten landed a sleek rod-and-reel combo, technically named a Shakespeare Reverb, but more recently christened the 12.84. This baby sports five feet six inches of gleaming pink graphite with a smooth little powerhouse spinning reel, five-point-five revolutions per crank and

The 12.84

prespooled with 115 yards of 6 pound line.
 
It did not say so in the ads, but the 12.84 also can let someone unscrew the bolt holding in the crank when packing the car, without telling the 12.84’s owner.
 
“I think I know where this is going,” FisherSpouse said calmly, referring to The Incident at Vega Reservoir.
 
There, Fishergarten found herself poised on a narrow bank of black mud, immersing her new trailrunners, with the 12.84 in hand.
 
“OK,” she told FisherSpouse. “Watch and learn.”
 

Fishergarten's Grandpa's Reel

Carefully, she reached back -- and cast. Instantly, the crank flew off the reel and followed a monofilament trail into the reservoir’s murky depths.

Fishergarten and FisherSpouse stared at the spot where the crank had gone down. Finally, “Nice cast,” he said.

Recalling Chapter 7 of “Fishing for Dummies,” Fishergarten knew that cranks “all turn to bring line into the reel.” In Internet terms, all upload, no download. Fishergarten was going to need that crank back.

Slowly, she waded into the cryogenically cold water. Just slightly before she turned completely blue, she spotted pink, grabbed the crank and bolted for shore.

On their way back to the car, slogging through the super-dense, body-slapping, bug-infested brush, FisherSpouse paused.

“At least,” he said, “you didn’t use internal combustion. No telling where that thing would have ended up.”

Next week, we take a peek at lines and lures. Until then, let’s hear it, FisherFriends. Use the comments section below to give us a little spin about what kind of reel you use and why.