It’s been with us for well over a century now. Before that rods and reels were sometimes made to go together, the reel fitting to the rod with a bolt or bolts going straight through the handle in some models. Agh, what would you give for a 11/2 ” diameter solid greenheart rod rather than one of these fairy-light carbon jobs? I imagine that the reel manufacturers started the whole thing by making one foot type that should fit all rods and to accommodate that foot most rod manufacturers fitted their rods with the customary two rings as pictured in seat A, though originally brass.
The accepted standard Ever since we have accepted that this design of reel foot is the accepted standard to the extent that we now seem stuck with it. The first thing that always strikes me as wrong about it is the fact that whatever reel seat we have had on the rods the angler is always left holding the roughest most uncomfortable bit of the handle, where all the fittings are. Perhaps that’s because of the way we hold the rod/reel combination; split your fingers, two to one side of the foot, two on the other. Yes, I know this doesn’t apply to fly anglers or users of multipliers, just those using spinning reels and to a lesser extent, centrepins. Have you ever noticed in TV shows and commercials how they always have a right idiot holding the rod at the bottom of the handle? Even one of the latest promotional videos for Discovery Home & Leisure showed one chap, supposed to be an experienced angler (?), holding his rod with one hand completely behind the reel and the other at the bottom. No, no, no! However, I digress. Full cork handle? What also gets me is that anglers, the really experienced ones, demand they have a full Portuguese cork handle. Twenty or so inches of expensive cork and the bit they hold 99% of the time is the reel seat which can be cold metal. Yet you try and persuade them to have a high density foam handle, just as good, and they will throw a right old tantrum. Many carp rods, of course, come without any material between the top grip and the butt grip. This sounds sensible, but even carp rods are drifting back to having fully covered handles and some carpers and pikers are starting to insist on full cork.
So what can we do to make the reel seat more comfortable? Back to reel seats and what can be done to make that little area where your hand grips the rods to make it more comfortable? Let’s look at some more. Seat B was the development of the two brass ring design, they were the same, but in carbon. A little warmer, but anyone having an old metal reel foot experienced problems. The carbon rings wouldn’t stick to the metal foot and kept sliding away leaving you with a bit of a problem whilst fighting big fish. The one big benefit to the two rings design was that you could have the reel positioned where you liked on the rod handle. Otherwise, these were, as far as I am concerned, an absolute nonsense. Some companies did try to modify the design a little. ABU made an adjustable screw fitting reel seat and later on Daiwa introduced one, which is still on one or two of their rods, I think. However, you are still left holding this contraption, the most uncomfortable bit of the handle.
There were, and still are, reel seats with a screw up fitting as in seat C. This one is on my Milo Lexia, but I have a Leeda Blue Diamond feeder rod where trouble has been taken by using a semi-covered front part, but the back part is still as crude as seat C. So now you have a really bad screw fitting to hold and you can’t adjust it either. In the latter part of the 90s more rods came in with ‘screw down’ reel seats thereby also covering some of the threads of the screw itself. This was like a breath of fresh air as far as I was concerned. At least the gap between foregrip and the rest of the handle was minimised, but still you can have cold metal to hold and on a winter’s day you don’t want that, especially if you hold the rod and feel for bites most of the time, eg: the Fox Barbel Special rod.
One of the nicer reel seats of this type must be that shown as seat D and appears here on my Harrison Chimera. I have, though, fitted this exact same seat, notice how it is also fatter just behind the reel fitting, to older Daiwa and Shimano rods. The only problem being that you have to remove rings and re-whip them back on afterwards. If you fancy having a go at converting an old rod then ask your local shop or visit the Hopkins and Holloway web site. Go to Fuji Reel Seats and it’s the IPS-DU6. (www.hopkinsholloway.co.uk). It does require shaping, but it sands down just like cork. Seat E is fitted on many ABU rods and this is by far the best. Even our Mark Wintle said as much last year. The seat is thick carbon with large recesses for the reel’s foot and it’s warm to touch and being a larger diameter it allows a better grip. The front part, the foregrip, screws well down to the rear part thereby keeping the gap to an absolute minimum. In fact, in use it is barely noticeable and once you have held one of these handles you won’t like going back, especially to those hideous twin rings. The only problem still is, it cannot be adjusted, but then I don’t find that a problem.
Many years ago I read a feature about lumber supports on the seats of cars. It was about the time when car manufacturers were jumping over one another to incorporate the latest silly gizmos that they thought drivers wanted. All except one car manufacturer, Saab. They had a orthopaedic surgeon to design their seats and he ruled out an adjustable lumber support on the grounds that on most people between 5’6″ and 6’4″ the amount of variance required was less than 1 centimetre. Also, the average person wouldn’t know where it should go and would therefore probably cause more back damage with it than without it. I think I’m right in saying that Saab still do not have an adjustable lumber support (up and down at least) and yet they are still rated as being the best design seats in the world, especially in an accident. Lesson? Perhaps the location of the fixed reel seat is the perfect position and it’s you that is at fault for not accepting this. Well, it could be and I get along with all my rods okay. Anyway, I think I’m far more concerned about designing reel seats that are comfortable to grip in all weathers rather than how far up the rod they are. I know Kevin Perkins recently told us how he was annoyed with some pike rods with short handles. Perhaps the next development will be telescopic lockable length handles so you can please yourself. Well come on, there’s more than a million anglers out there, surely someone can come up with a simple design to this problem and a perfectly comfortable reel seat. Get your thinking caps on. |
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