.

The nerd / geek / mechanical engineer / machinist / architect / lover or nice clean lines / nerd (damn, I said that one) in me has trouble concealing a love for such a well made piece of spinning machinery.

However, the truth is that with a little elbow grease and the access to a drill press or at minimum a drememl rotary tool, you can take a mitchell 308, an alcedo micron or a cargem 33 and turn it into almost exactly this. If you happen to find a daiwa 500c (not to let the secret out), you can make something almost as beautiful that weighs less than 5 oz.

If you guys are really interested, I'd be happy to post some of the pics of my antique reel rebuilds. Joe puts me to shame, but I'm learning...and I'm computer savvy enough to post both comments and pictures on a forum (Joe et. al are not). If there's REAL interest, I'll get Joe to add some thoughts about the process.

In general if you thought that the tinkering involved with fly fishing was potentially life consuming, Joe has created a whole other world for you. In the purest sense, ultralight spin fishing involves an old flexible rod or at least a $100 TFO purpose-built rod...maybe something that you need to get made up for you / need to build for yourself. Then you'll need to spool up 7x tippet with a 5x bite tippet as your line, all tied over a 15lbs fly line backing. The knots on both ends of the main line should involve a bimini twist, and your line-to-hook knot should be something loose like a berkley not or something similar. It's like the two worlds of fly fishing tinkering and spin fishing tinkering have collided without the bait.

As a side note, I made disparaging comments to myself about those guys that were ALL about their knot-to-knot strength analysis until I had a white bass take me instantly into my backing, and when the backing knot hit the top guide, the mono broke from the backing...damn...I'll tie a stronger knot from now on.

In my experience, I typically tie my own spinning "lures" these days. They're all Cypert's Minnows of various colors, maribou jigs and a version of the Austin Angler Crawfish pattern (search the forum). If you tie them with a "Large" bead head, then they're game to cast on a spinning rod with 6x or 7x line.

So my setup...
I'm fishing a TFO 7' 3wt / ultralight spinning rod. When I cast a fly, I'm fishing a 2wt Airflow line on a cheap composite SA Concept 2-35 reel. When I fish it as a spinning rod, I have a daiwa 500c (refinished) with either 30m of 6X or 7X depending on the water over 100-ish m of 15lbs backing. With the fly, I fish woolly buggers, elk hair cadises (still working on a great pattern that involves foam), foam spiders and tiny clousers. On the spinning rod, I fish Cypert's Minnows, Austin Angler Crawfish, and various "jig" patterns.

One more bebida this evening and I might have laid down my full Credo. Maybe that should wait for another night.

Let's leave it at "good god, that reel you posted is amazingly sexy..."

Worthless without pics....so.....

I have a little old wibbly-wobbly ultralight spinning rig that I have to take and try with some big old fat cone head and beadhead buggers and such.

And we sure would like to see some photos of your modified tackle, the manual pickup reel etc.

Yes, I find this awesome and you should post some more pictures. I have been gathering vintage skeleton fly reels and have been thinking about restoration. I also like modifying things and ultralight fishing, so bring it.

Alright. Here are some pictures of a Daiwa Minispin that I've been working on. It's a slightly larger version of the 500c. These reels were mainly cast aluminum and were painted with a thick paint to cover up tool marks.

The refurbishing process starts by taking the reel completely apart. I then use a heavy-duty paint thinner and a wire brush to remove the paint. Then begins the process of removing tool marks, casting marks and getting the surface ready to be polished. Doing it well involves files, grinding wheels, a pass with 200, 400 and 6oo grit sand paper, before finishing it all up with a buffing wheel.

The aluminum parts end up nice and shiny, and the brass parts (most of which have a thin chrome layer that easily comes off) provide a nice contrast.

That said, my attention to detail and my experience with this is far less impressive than Joe Robinson's. I'll try to get him to post pictures of some of his reels (there are a bunch in his book), but there's on on the books website which is referenced somewhere earlier in the thread.

Anyway, here's my current best looking reel. I'll start with the "Before" picture...



I won't call the next two "After" quite yet because it's still a work in progress.





You can see that when I cut the bail off, I also turned down the pickup nub so that it's a friendlier shape. The screws all polish up to be brass and make for a nice effect.

I'm also working on an Alcedo Micron, a Daiwa 500c, a Garcia Mitchell 308, some Mitchell 310s (my personal favorite workhorse over the years). Other good candidates for this are Cargem 33, Mignon, Orvis 50A, Dam Quick Microlite, and probably others. The key is that all of these reels (aside from the 310) are almost 100% metal. Their bodies are cast, and their gearings have been precision machined.

I'm not saying that any of these reels would compete with the engineering beauty above in the thread, but I would submit that you can have a really beautiful reel that will potentially outlast any of us. With $30 spent on Ebay, some sand paper, a rotary tool and a lot of elbow grease, you can turn a gummed up old real into a hot rod.

Nice pics. Looks like some interesting detail work.

Is Joe's book available online? I visited Sportman's Finest, but couldn't find any links to the book.

I bought my copies of Joe's book by calling Sportsman's Finest.

I heard his presentation on ultralight spinning at the GRTU meeting in late April, and Sportman's Finest had the TFO rod and Sedona Reel setups available for sale at the meeting. I had them remove the bail and add the backing and line (actually 7x tippet, since Joe is adamant that a commercial spinning line bought from Bass Pro or Cabela's does not work well).

I had my first opportunity to try the rig out yesterday in the creek behind my house. It is canopied by trees and there are plenty of weeds on the bank, so fly casting is difficult. But this rig worked well. I was casting a Beck's "super bugger" I had tied with lead dumbbell eyes on a size 4 hook, in rust brown. On about my third cast, a nice bass nailed it, and gave me quite a fight on the light rod and line.

This is becoming more and more compelling as I read. The point about the bail being removed still has not completely sunk in for me. I did see that those high end Van Staal reels have no bail on them straight from the box. But all my life I've seen "regular" spinning reels with a bail. I did get the part about the bail causing loose loops if closed prematurely. But it seems that if one were to simply wait until the cast were over and then close the bail one might avoid this loose loop problem?

I'm just thinking this through. I have two little low end UL spinning rigs at home that have been neglected and now I see a potential use for them.

I've read that even the act of closing the bail across the line can cause line twist. There are a lot of folks that spincast quite a bit that don't use the "automatic" feature on modern reels where turning the crank handle closes the bail. They close them by hand before reeling at all.

I close by hand.

If you take the bail off, you no longer have to close and open it by hand. You can go through the entire cast and retrieve only taking your non-dominant (reeling) hand off the handle when you actually rare back and cast (or barely flick your wrist like in the video). The rest of the line management is done with the index finger on your casting hand.

When you're reeling in, you stop the pickup arm in a spot that you can get to the line with your index finger. You pick it up off the roller and cast. Then you feather the line, stop it, and use your index finger to put it back on the roller.

Aside from general line control to avoid birds nesting, it also makes for a much controlled lure. Say for instance a big bass hits the lure almost as soon as it hits the water. Since you were feathering the line to slow it down, the line is nice and tight between you and Mr Bass. Also since you stopped the line with your finger, you're currently holding the line as he hits it, so you're automatically in control of the rod and line (no fumbling to get the bail flipped over and get slack out of the line to fight the fish).

It takes a little more concentration at first, but once you get used to having the bail off, you'll wonder how you ever fished the other way. It becomes second nature just like throwing a tight loop on a fly line to get under an overhang. You don't think through the mechanics of it every time...you just do it.

Interesting, very interesting... thank you. I may just give this a try.

The way Joe explained it, it's the recoil from the bail closing that jars the spool enough to cause loose loops of line that eventually form the bird's nest. He also said that since the line he advocates is so light (7x tippet), it can weaken the line to smack it with the bail too many times.

I'll admit that I have a lot of old spinning reel habits to unlearn before I can do it the way he suggests, but the results so far have been promising (and fun).

Joe said that he still loved to fly fish, he just chooses his spots. His favorite places to fish are high mountain streams, so he'll use the spinning reel on the spin/fly rod in the wooded sections where there isn't much clearance, then switch to a 3 wt reel and fly line to fish the meadow sections. He often uses many of the same flies in either setting, or will add a small Thill bobber/indicator for added weight with lighter flies.