doublegunshop.com - home Forums General Discussion DoubleGun BBS @ doublegunshop.com Off topic: "For everything, there is a season..."

Hmmm,

Alright guys, which side of the reel is the handle traditionally supposed to be on? I was taught in the sixties that for right-handed people it was on the right side, and never to be used to reel in a fish. Now, on some TV shows, some actually reel in fish that way. It just doesn't seem right.

Regards
Ken

IMHO, those that cast and reel exclusively from the right side, out of tradition, are a half a bubble from plumb. If one is right handed and cast a fly with his or her right arm, does it make sense to you to have to change the rod from the right hand to the left hand in order to reel in line? Of course not! For a right handed caster fly reels should be reeled with the left hand and vice versa for southpaws.

You don't reel in a fish, you reel in slack line.

james: i did most of my trout fishin in the catskill mountain streams of southern ny...however, i did fish the green river and deerfield river around greenfield mass back in the late sixties...were you there then?

I was and the Deerfield was one of my favorites.
Jim

jim: in many ways, those were the good old days, in spite of the disturbing social and political turmoil of the times...

did you happen to know any of the lapointe family in the area?

Lagopus: Gorgeous brown trout! Ours don't quite look like that.

Ken61: I'm a Southpaw so I tend to prefer left hand retrieve. After WWII and the introduction of spin-casting to the masses, left handed fly reels became far-more popular here.

Rubbish. If you can't handle a trout with you're left hand on the rod get off the stream. All the old classic Hardy reels are right hand wind only.

Cane is addictive. So much so I have learned to make my own. Built a little over 20 so far. The one on the bottom of the picture is one of mine.



Matt

I fish an Orvis Battenkill two tip cane rod that was my dad's. I have a Robichaud reel on it that looks very much like this one except my reels are set up for right hand retrieve. I have a couple of other cane rods that were made in Scotland.

I've fished both fresh and salt with flies for decades. If you are fighting big fish, you want to reel with your dominant hand. I'll reel with the left on trout streams. Despite being set up for right handed reeling, a Perfect can be used to reel with the left hand as long as one doesn't reel against too much strain as it will unscrew the side plate. I have several set up that way in 2 7/8" and 3 1/8" for light tippets.

I'm getting back into cane after almost 15-years of only fishing modern stuff. I sold all of my old rods and the English reels for them (mostly Hardy) after my favorite fishing spot was destroyed in a huge fire here in 2003 (the Heyman fire). Prices at the time were sky-high and I realized a significant profit on a bunch of stuff I had mostly sourced in yard sales and dinky flyshops back East in the 1980s. My work allowed me to secure the modern stuff at a "key employee" discount, so I loaded-up. I was mostly fishing in Wyoming anyway, and the modern tackle was a better fit there. In the last year or so, I've been hearing that my old fishing grounds might finally be recovering from the fire and it's aftermath. I had actually been missing my old stuff of-late and when I thought about how I would begin to fish it again, I just couldn't face it without my usual arsenal of older bamboo rods. This time, however, I thought I'd try it with period correct American reels from the 1930s. What a fun process that has been! Much like guns, prices for old tackle are actually somewhat depressed at the moment, so my timing has been pretty good for a change.