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Shimano's are known for their gear reliability.As for inline's there is an expensive Shimano version originally designed not for ice fishing but can be repurpose for ice fishing. It's called a Shimano Seihakou reel.
I might have just had a dud of a reel, but i found the "free fall" feature on mine to not work properly, unless i had a heavy jig on. I bought an UL tickle pickle so it was my primary panfish rod. I was disappointed that most of my panfish jigs didnt free fall and i eventually just switched the reel out for a small spinning one.
Now that is a sweet reel, but I wonder how some of those models work without a drag???
Mine was the same way, I ended up moving the free fall to a bit heavier rod to fish bigger/heavier jigs. I put a spinning reel on my tickle stick also.
My Black Betty FreeFall works great for me.My experience is that it does great even with tiny jigs or hooks with tiny splitshot.Is that a consensus here?
Fact: Most reels comes with excessive grease and oil. If one really wants to achieve the optimal performance, it does take a little cleaning out the excessive grease and oil in the reels. Even spinning reels gets sluggish when fished in cold freezing weather.Reels like bait casting have some spool bearings. Cleaning them out and putting in high speed oil helps them a lot. Especially in the case of casting lighter weight lures, namely in the 1/4 oz or lighter. It can be achieved to get free fall on lures with 1/32nd oz. Although a lure pulling a spool/wheel will tend to be slower than line just peeling off a spinning reel.For your inline reels, cleaning out the spool bearings will get them to free fall lures even better. It follows the same principal of using just enough lubricant to achieve the optimal results.
Ok the freefall function didn’t work in an ambient temperature of 85f. At that temp could it be that easy that it has too much grease? Never had any problems with the 6061’s or for that matter any of my spinning reels. Would be great if all I had to do to get the freefall to drop a 1/32 oz jig is clean some grease. Keep it safe! JDL
I purchased couple of these last season and like using them. Around here our walleye average is under 18”. Looking to be taking couple trips to walleye destinations and wonder how well the drag works on some larger eyes. Anyone have experience with these?
Try this Black Betty. Blast to fish.
we were catching 3-5lb white bass on a freefall a few years ago and the drag was terrible on them. I'd look into a spinning reel.
All these in line reels seem to be made for shanty jigging only. You take them out in the elements and they don't work like they should. Pros and cons but I'll take a solid spinning setup any day of the week.
Same problem with my ghost, does not like to freefall small stuff, especially when it is cold and/or windy. Has anyone ever tore one down and replaced the oil/grease to something lighter?
Yes. Can't find it but one of the members actually had a step by step post on this site. good luck!Keep it safe! JDL