Welcome back to our continuing series of articles on Freshwater Fishing Gear, we will cover the Spinning reel today. With this series we are hoping to take out the fright of purchasing fishing gear from the novice angler.

We will cover a wide range of fishing gear from reels, rods, lures, baits, jigs, lines, and knives. It is hoped by the end of the series your can go online and buy the right tackle and within budget.

We began our review on freshwater fishing reels with the spincast reel, the best reel for beginners and the infrequent fishermen. This review will cover the spinning reel, and will continue with the baitcast reel and lastly an article on the fly fishing reel.

Spinning reels come in numerous forms and are utilized by kids, casual hobbyist and enthusiastic sportsman alike. When it comes to fishing reels, the spinning reel is the most well-known and popular. It is chiefly used for light weight fishing and dominates in terms of performance and simplicity of use.

The spinning reel is perfect for landing just about any fish out there; whether it is racing rivers, local creeks, mountain lakes or your favorite hidden pond. You can catch small pond fish such as bluegills, catfish, trout and bass; it doesn’t matter, if you have strong enough line your spinning reel will land the fish.

The spinning reel has a very recognizable look with the large wire bale around the open-faced line spool and a line roller to help control the line as you retrieve it. The reel handle or “crank” can have either one or two knobs, both work equally well at preventing line friction as you retrieve it, with little or no snarling. This type of reel is mounted on the underside of the rod.

There are few negatives to the spinning reel. It is only limited by the thickness of your fishing line, when compared to the baitcast reel it holds less line. This means you will need to use a smaller, lighter line to guarantee you have enough line to get to the point you want. The lighter the line the smaller fish you can land. The spinning reel is also not as accurate at casting as the baitcast reel

A good example of this type of reel is the Daiwa Opus Spinning Reel. Priced at under $38 it is an affordable choice for general-duty fishing, well-equipped and geared for extra power.

The next article in our series “Freshwater Fishing Gear Beginners Guide” will feature the baitcast reel, an outstanding reel for master anglers.

The first time I went on a fishing boat I was about 25 years old. I had always been scared of water previously and, to be honest, if I hadn’t been a bit drunk and in sort of a reckless mood that day, I wouldn’t have even agree to go out. The friend who took me out was just the opposite of me.

He had practically been raised on fishing boats. He had been sea fishing, lake fishing, river fly fishing ” he had done pretty much any kind of fishing you could think of. He had even done it professionally for a couple of years, but had left that life behind because he missed his girlfriend too much.

The sort of expedition we were going on was pretty tame in comparison to some of the stuff he had done. This was not one of those big deep sea fishing boats that I used to watch going out to sea when our family would take trips out to the ocean side. This was just a little aluminum fishing boat ” basically a small, flat bottomed boat with a little outboard motor on it. It was stable for its size, but its size wasn’t very big.

As soon as we left sure, I started to regret it. As I said, I’d never been on fishing boats before, and rocking back and forth, already a little tipsy, was doing nothing to assuage my anxious stomach. All my other friends made fun of me because I was hanging on for dear life as we went along at the overwhelming speed of 5 knots.

As soon as he moored it in the middle of the water, however, I calmed down a little bit. I didn’t realize that, with fishing boats, the goal was to find a good spot and then sit there. I would have been down with that. I just wasn’t into the traveling to and from part. As soon as we were sitting there, rocking gently with the waves, I actually started to enjoy it. It was really mellowing me out nicely, and the look of the sea and the sky had me drifting off into a blissful state. I did not actually catch anything, but one of my friends did. He got a big bass that was actually large enough to feed all of us together. We took it in, cleaned it and cooked it up, and served it simple with some boiled potatoes. Somehow, the fact that we had caught it made it taste better.