Fly fishing reels for ice?

[croixflats]

Talking to my bro yesterday and he brought up an idea for minimizing line curl and jigs spinning. He thought about using some of his older fly reels for fishing pan fish.

Draw back I guess would be lack of drag. But the compactness would be a benefit over a baitcaster reel and I would think less likelihood of freezing up.

Wondering if anybody has tried a fly reel and if so what was the outcome.

[blackdog1101]

I have used one the past few weekends. I'm still experimenting, but I think it has merit, especially for small horizonatal jigs like Gill Pills, Marmooskas, Fat Boys, etc. For larger vericle jigs like Frostee jigs, Gem N' Eyes, Forage Minnows, etc, I doubt it matters.

With the fly reel I've found that I need to keep my thumb on the spool when I set the hook, otherwise the line just strips off the reel. When dropping the jig down the hole pulling the line off by hand is a bit of a nuisance, but on the other hand the fish seem to be interested in the slow fall of the jig. So far, the click drag has been enough to handle the fight of any of the fish I've caught, but the biggest I've caught so far is an 11" crappie. If I catch a larger fish I imaging I may need to use my thumb to add some resistance to the drag.

Overall, I think it's good, but it's not a "one size fits all" solution. Probably best for finicky bites.

[Chode2235]

Yeah, I bet they are quite a bit lighter too. You can probably get a bit better balance when fishing a super sensitive rod.

Try it out and let us know how it goes.

[croixflats]

I'll give it a try. Blackdog thanks for the input I forgot about the feeding the line aspect and holding the line while setting the hook.

[Dark Cloud]

I played around with fly real quite a bit at the end of last season. I enjoyed useing something differnt and it has some merit.

Line twist is surely minimized.

I have some nice Ross reels that are light weight and have super nice drags. So I can balance things nicely and no need for the "thumb" drag.

The biggest drawback is stripping off line in deeper water. I will only use this set-up in 10-12 fow or less...