Spincast Reels - Americas Favorite Fishing Reels

If you're like me, chances are you've owned one or more spincast reels in your lifetime. These little inexpensive reels have been around for over 50 years and are still catching fish today.

One of the first and one that is still popular today is the Zebco 33 that was introduced back in 1954. It's inventer, R.D Hull, pitched the idea to the then "Zero Hour Bomb Company" as a fishing reel that wouldn't backlash.

He told the executives at the company that fishermen were fed up with the baitcasting reels that backlashed. His new design used a spooled reel to help control the line as it went out from the reel.

The company was interested and in 1954, introduced 25 of the new reels they called the Zebco Standard.

For many of us, a spincast reel was our first "real" fishing reel. It was generally the first reel we received after getting started with a little plastic spincast reels like the Zebco 202, 404 or one of the spincast reels from Johnson or Diawa.

Unlike the mostly plastic spincast reels, the 33 was made of nearly all metal. In fact, I believe it was an all metal reel except perhaps on some later models the reel foot and ring around the frame were something like graphite.

No doubt that countless hundreds of thousands of Panfish and Bass have met their demise by someone wielding a spincast reel. I know I've helped many end up in the frying pan myself!

The Zebco 33 and other spincast reels like it, have been around a long time because of their dependability. Another reason is its ease of use. People who seldom fish can put one up in their attic for a year, get it down and go fishing without having to relearn how to cast.

For beginners, a spincast reel takes every bit of a few minutes to learn to cast, unlike most baitcasting and spinning reels.

Not only that, but a Spincast reel can take quite a bit of abuse and keep on working. I use to keep one in back of my pickup when I worked the oil fields. That rod and reel bounced around for several years and was always ready to go whenever I found a pond, creek or strip pit waiting to be fished!

I suspect that in the next 50 years, there will be another generation who has learned to fish with spincast reels. No wonder then that spincast reels are called Americas favorite fishing reel.