This might be a dumb question or mabye not but now that I'm starting to fish more tournaments this came to mind. 90% of the reels I fish with are the older style curados and the older citicas which I have upgraded with bearings. Say if I get a bad backlash on a reel thats to bad to repair on the water, couldnt I just pull out the spool and insert another spool from another reel? Or if I need to quickly change to a different rod but want the same lb. test of line that I have on another reel, couldn't I just switch out the spools? Do many people do this? Any disadvantages?

As long that they're of the same body type (Citica B Frame to Curado B Frame or whatever year model) then yes.

If you have a bad backlash, your not going to be able to get the spool out. There is not enough clearance beteen the frame and the spool to bring line out with it (that is knarled up and above the spool O.D.

Plus, I would not want to take a reel apart on the water unless it was a last resort. I loose parts bad enough in my house.

If you like a certain rod, I would take the reel (with the professional overrun) off and put a different reel on and work on it after getting off the water. Or cut the bad line off and respool.

The only thing stopping me from doing this is cost. A curado spool will set you back about $40. With spinning reels and their free spare spools, it is much easier to keep spare spools with different lines on them. Shimano has stopped giving free spare spools on some models though. That blows.

Quicker and safer to just switch reels. Don't really see any advantage to just switching out the spools.

If it wasn't for the cost, the best way to do this would be to have a couple extra spools in the boat with line on them. that way you could change if you have a backlash or if you wanted to change line sizes. But the cost for extra spools is just too much.

I'll give you a perfect example, I was fishing on Broken Bow this past weekend in a tournament and was fishing jigs on 10 lb. line, now I'm going to Fork tomorrow and need 20 lb. line on those same reels. then Sunday I'm going to Pine Creek Lake and 20 lb. will be overkill. Will need more like 12 or 15 there. Then I'm going back to Fork during Spring Break. I'll be changing the line in those same reels something like 5 times in the next couple of weeks. Crazy and costly. But cheaper than buying 4 new spools at $40+ a piece.

Kinda funny too that they want 1/3 the price of a new reel for a spare spool.