Fixed Spool Reels

[Grant Lever]

yeah budgie i know they are ,thats why i haven't used them in that mode,but a lot of aussies' use them all the time for beachcasting.socan't be all bad....think a pair of malloch's may turn a few heads on the local carp puddles lol...

 

[Budgie Burgess]

LOL They do cast well though Grant I used to have a wide spool alvey that I used in tournements for back casting.

 

[Sean Meeghan]

Sad person that I am I lost most of a night's sleep over this thread, but I think I now have a a reasonable theory of line twist!

Every fixed spool imparts one turn of twist in your line for each rotation of the bail arm. You can prove this by attaching a long loop of line to a door handle putting a spoon handle through the other end of the loop and rotating the spoon handle. It might help to tape the spoon to the outside circumference of a plate and rotate the plate as though you were turning the steering wheel on your car. This is then exactly analogous to the line roller/bail arm set up.

If the twist was able to pass over the line roller and remain on the line on the spool then, as Fred, Ron and others have said, it will untwist when you cast and you don't have any problems.

The attack of the dreaded curlies occurs as Ron said when the line roller pushes the twists down the line as it goes on to the reel. But this isn't all the story!

The first line on the reel now has no twist in it and as the twists build up in the line not yet on the reel the twists start to pass over the line roller (think of it as building up tension in a spring) so the later line on the spool has twists in it - maybe even more than one twist per turn of the reel.

You still end up with the curlies in the line between your reel and the end tackle when you have fully retrieved, but you also get curlies between your reel and the indicator when you have cast. These are caused by untwisted line being twisted as it comes off the spool. These curlies will twist in the opposite direction to the others!

Now why don't you get line twist (other than that caused by spinning bait)whilst float fishing? Easy! the line is under less tension so the twists are able to pass over the line roller and on to the spool. This is why retrieving the line through grass removes twists, but you mustn't use your fingers to put it under tension or else you'll just push twists down the line again.

Now to the vexed question of a line roller that actually rolls! I can't for the life of me see why an efficient line roller allows twists to pass over it. I can see why a 'grooved' roller works in that it holds water in the groove (capilliary action)which acts as a lubricant and allows the twist to pass over it (in effect the line rotates against the roller as a twist passes over it). The line has to rotate by the same amount on a stationary 'roller' or on a roller with a perfect bearing in it. I suspect that improved surface finish is more of a contributor than the bearing (we need a tribologist!).

Fred is right that high speed reels make the problem worse by increasing the tension on the line, so slowing the retrieve rate down should help combat twist.

I've given myself a headache!!

 

[Budgie Burgess]

So Sean is it better for the line roller to actually "roll" or not?

Purely an academic question because as Ive allready said it has never been that much of a problem for me in the past with mono and now with braid totally irellevant!

 

[Sean Meeghan]

That is a really difficult question!

Here's an attempt at an answer!

In my opinion the only real need for a line roller to roll is to prevent grooving. When the roller rolls the line passing over it is stationary with respect to its surface, so grooving doesn't occur. Now according to my rather hazy memory of the mechanics of friction it takes a greater force to start an object moving than it does to keep it moving. To pass a twist over a roller the line must move relative to the surface of the roller (in effect it rotates around its own axis as it passes over the roller). So line passing over a stationary roller should pass a twist more easily than line passing over a rolling roller. I don't think you can measure how much easier this is so I may be making an academic point here!

So the answer is that I think it is important to have a rolling roller to prevent line grooving. In addition to this the surface of the roller must have a surface finish which gives very low friction when line passes over it. Unfortunately the roller relies on line friction to turn so these may be mutually exclusive requirements. Some lab work required here!

If materials tchnology allowed it I think the best solution would be a fixed 'roller'. Its simple and it should pass line twist better. But nylon is very abrasive so I don't know if this is possible.

Where's the paracetamol!!!

 

[Ron 'The Hat' Clay (ACA-Life Member)]

Sean,

The roller acts as a pulley wheel preventing friction, it's as simple as that.

I remember the old Mitchell 300s which had a bit of hardened steel in the bail over which the line ran. In time, this bit of steel grooved with frightening results to the line.

By far the majority of modern FS reels have a roller that rolls. The rollers are mounted on ball bearings. Any concept which supports the idea that the bale should have a device that doesn't roll is retrograde.

 

[Sean Meeghan]

I agree to some extent Ron, but I'd question how often the roller actually rolls in real fishing situations. I'd bet a large sum of money that it only happens in the same situations as when we get line twist. This is not to say it causes line twist it just happens in the same fishing situations. When the reel is new I'd agree with you: the roller rolls almost all the time. When the reel has been on the rod for a few months, been rained on, dropped in the mud, etc then its probably a different story.

Materials technology has improved so much since the old hardened steel 'rollers' (remember the chromed brass ones on the Intrepids!)that I think it may well be possible to design a stationary roller that doesn't groove. Techniques such as ion implantation and sputtering can give extremely hard, smooth surfaces and it is possible to design in a wear indicator (such as a coloured layer). When was the last time one of your rod rings grooved?

 

[Ron 'The Hat' Clay (ACA-Life Member)]

Sean,

I have a 10 year old Shimano Stradic 4000 GTM in my hand as I type. I have used this reel for all sorts of things, from spinning, to chucking out heavy feeders, to pike fishing with dead baits as well as barbel fishing on several rivers.

The roller still rolls make no mistake, under light and heavy loads.

All it has ever had in the way of maintenance is a wipe down with a rag and the occasional spray with WD 40.

 

[Sean Meeghan]

Fair enough Ron I can't argue with that. Bet you still get line twist when you're feeder fishing!

 

[Ron 'The Hat' Clay (ACA-Life Member)]

Of course.

 

[Peter Jacobs]

If you are really concerned about line twist then why not approach this from a different angle?

I think that Gardner manufacture an anti-twist lead which is rather like a ledger but has vanes which impart the "opposite" twist. I have used these a lot when fishing a feeder at medium to long range. At the end of your session you simply attach the weight to the end of the line and cast out to your fishing distance. Upon retrieve the weight will take the twist out.

To see if it has been totally successful simply look at the weight at full retrieve - if it is spinning, then cast out agaion and repeat this until the weight does not spin after full retrieve.

As I'm typing this I think the name of the lead is a Spin Doctor - not completely sure though.

 

[Sean Meeghan]

You're right Peter its a Spin Doctor and I use one myself after a Tench session if I've used the feeder. It is irritating though when you get line twist half way through a session. I also think it contributes to the 'wind knots' which occur when a loop of line is pulled off the spool when casting and catches in the rings.

 

[john ledger]

Peter
Once again you have used my name without my permission,send the cheque through the post(ten quid will do)------------for now

 

[john ledger]

No make it twenty .You are a man of means

 

[john ledger]

Thinking about it i should really be asking for more

 

[Budgie Burgess]

Ive not used a "spin doctor" myself but have watched a couple of people use them....surely for them to work though there would have to be "handed" models for reels that rotate clockwise or anti clock wise?

Once again Ive never found it to be a problem on the reels Ive used over the last 40 years...as long as your line is of a good quality and loaded correctly.

I should imagine that the biggest single cause of this "problem" is the excessive use of baitrunner style mechanisms which are horrendous for imparting twist.

 

[Sean Meeghan]

You right Budgie - don't use a spin doctor with your Mitchell Match! The only times I have experienced line twist is when I got into the habit of threading line through my rod rings with the bait runner on - soon stopped that! And when feeder fishing for Tench. Not sure that there's a cure for the latter at the moment so I just use a spin doctor every now and again and make sure I use the latest model of my Diawa BTRs.

 

[Alan Tyler]

Left-handed people are ghosts. Nobody wants a crack at an open 10% of the market when there's an overcrowed 90% in which to jostle. Abu 600 series? Mitchells? Be asking pet-shops to stock dinosaur food next...


[Crawls bitterly back under left-handed stone to sulk.]

 

[Grant Lever]

mitchells,the mechanism at least,are left handed.

 

[Limestone]

Some of the posters above seem to be confusing two different types of line twist.

One is caused by some part of the end rig spinning on the retrieve. That could be the bait, offset shot, or whatever. (Worst culprits are blade spinners and devon minnows.) This type of twist is worst at the business end of the line but can often be alleviated by swivels and anti-kink vanes and suchlike. Too fast a retrieve is going to make this worse. I used to have a Mitchell 498 that could pigtail 15lb Maxima, just because the retrieve was so fast.

The other type of twist is that caused by the way a fixed spool reel works, and occurs more or less equally along the whole length of the line in use, although it will tend to concentrate in the area of the line most used, or most likely to be off the reel when the two main causes happen. These two causes are the drag slipping and/or the use of free spool systems. That is because when either of those things happen, line is comming off the reel as if off a revolving spool reel (think centrepin or multiplier) but being wound on again in fixed spool style. As Sean Meeghan said above, in normal use a fixed spool puts a twist in on the cast and takes it out again on the retrieve. (Although that depends on whether you wind the line on in the first place by letting the spool revolve or having the line come off the side. (And it's worse still if you pick the wrong side!)) So what happens when the clutch slips or the free spool system operates is that little or no twist is generated as the line comes off the reel, but twist is put in when you wind that line back in.

I would expect that the main reason some people experience very little twist is that they hardly ever have the clutch give line, probably because they backwind more than use the drag.

Oh, and as for sidecasters - they generate colossal amounts of line twist, for the reason I outline above, but in reverse - ie the line comes off fixed spool style, but is wound on revolving drum style. The only time you might get away without line twist being too major an issue with a sidecaster is for rolling meat - if the meat rolling on the bottom untwists the line, but the river would have to be flowing the right way!