Better for Long Casts: Wider Spool, or Taller Spool?

[GrowleyMonster]

All other things equal including line capacity, bearing quality, etc, what makes a better caster, wider, or taller spool?

[oc1]

The dogma is that a wider and shorter spool is better for casting.  Competitive casters used to use short little spools.  A wider spool has better ergonomics for casting as well; you can get your thumb up on it.

I've never been able to wrap my mind around the physics of it all though.  It seems like a taller spool should take less energy to get it started and each revolution will deliver more line.

I get a feeling this will not be Dave's shortest response ever.

[JasonGotaProblem]

Popcorn is ready. Great topic. I think the benefit of more line releases per revolution might be countered by the additional momentum needed to get the spool spinning. So if you're heaving 10oz that tall spool might be better but if you're throwing a quarter ounce the wider spool is probably better.

Not many people call a 4/0 senator a caster's choice. But nobody calls a 349 a good casting reel.

[Cor]

I once wrote something on this but will have to look.

I have gone through narrow spools like the pen 49 for many years but after that era most reels were 40 or 50s and wide spools.

I prefer a 40 reel, but that may be for different reasons.   A narrow spool with a bigger arbour should instinctively be the better caster, but there are few reels like that around (this part of the world)

Our game here revolves largely around casting and my experience and also from chatting to others is that there is no obvious difference between the reels.   Once you are used to your rig, they are all a much of a muchness, perhaps the other factors that influence play a bigger role then the reel.

Ill get back to this later

[jurelometer]

Jason is on the right track.  Momentum/inertia does more harm than good during nearly all of the cast for any payload. The ideal spool would speed up and slow down at exactly the same rate as the payload pulling the line.

This means that you want the lowest moment of inertia.

Moment of inertia on a rotating cylinder is (mass * radius²)/2

So more spool weight is bad, and more spool height is really bad (since the radius gets  squared in the equation).

For a given line capacity, a taller spool will require more material, which means more mass , in addition to the larger radius.

A smaller diameter to  width ratio (within reason) wins.  That is why casting conventionals all fall within the same ballpark.

 If you want the full explanation and set of equations, look up "formula for momentum of a flywheel".  The best casting spool has the properties of the worst flywheel.  Sort of the opposite of the common natural inclination when looking at the problem.

-J

[the rockfish ninja]

Most of the distance casting competitors use Diawa Millionaire & ABU 6500 reels. I think over the years of trial & error they've narrowed it down to the size & shape of spool that performs best for distance.

For a while in my surfcasting days I was using a narrow spool Avet and it was really hard to manage backlashes at first, although I got the hang of it after a while, but the RPMs of the narrow spool seemed really fast at the beginning of the cast and hard to control. Went back to a wider spool reel eventually.

[GrowleyMonster]

Wow thanks for the great response, everyone. Seems like a pretty solid consensus, that a wide spool, within reasonable limits, is a good thing, at least for casting distance, and really, who is NOT obsessed at least a little bit, with how far they can cast?

So limiting factors might be what... maybe torsion on the spool and frame, and difficulty in guiding the line on the spool, and a large angular moment twisting the reel seat when retrieving, flexing and bending of the spool spindle and even the spool itself... what else? Obviously you can't go totally off the chain with spool width, or else there would be extremely wide custom reels in competition use. It's nothing to make a frame wider and turn a wider spool. Well, says the guy who hasn't done it yet.

I regard my 140 squidders as being great casters, and not just because they are ball bearing reels. They just cast really good, for me, and check all my boxes except quick adjust mag braking. The spool width to diameter ratio seems to be a good starting place. Would adding say a half inch of width to a reel like the 140, with a frame that could handle it, be beneficial, or is it already at a "golden ratio" configuration? It puzzles me that a common modification to a 140 is to make it narrower. Turning a custom spool doesn't look particularly challenging, nor the spindle for it. Widening the frame slightly, likewise, doesn't seem like it would be difficult, particularly if you don't expect to be fighting really ginormous fish with the reel. And yet modders are making their squidders narrower, and not wider.

And not to take my own thread off topic, but wouldn't a larger arbor in the hypothetical wider spool stiffen the spool and lighten the line load enough to make casting better, as long as the spool would still hold sufficient line for a max cast? I am pretty sure I will never make a 250 yard cast, so if I have 350 yards or so of line on a wide spool having a relatively large diameter arbor, couldn't that be a possible performance boost?

[GrowleyMonster]

Most of the distance casting competitors use Diawa Millionaire & ABU 6500 reels. I think over the years of trial & error they've narrowed it down to the size & shape of spool that performs best for distance.

For a while in my surfcasting days I was using a narrow spool Avet and it was really hard to manage backlashes at first, although I got the hang of it after a while, but the RPMs of the narrow spool seemed really fast at the beginning of the cast and hard to control. Went back to a wider spool reel eventually.

The two reels sound like good choices. Both BB reels of respected quality level. Do you happen to have data on the diameter and width of the spools of those two reels? I don't own and have never owned either one.

[oc1]

Somewhere here from a long time ago there are photos of a group of guys casting off rocky cliffs for yellowtail using Penn 49 type reels.  They were somewhere in the Southern Hemisphere and had the reel mounted below the right hand.  Wish I could find it again because the whole scene was very thought-provoking.  Anybody know?

[Cor]

I can't find the notes I am referring to, but I do remember that my conclusion was precisely as I put it here.

Firstly what is the objective, "better caster"?  In my book that could well be comfortable easy to cast without a major risk of a blowup or backlash.

If it is maximum distance, that is always nice to achieve, and occasionally needed in reel fishing but not that often and should perhaps be left to competitive dry casters.  With distance also comes accuracy, no good casting 150 mt but 20 degrees from where you want to be!

My objective has always been a balance between the two as trying to cast at distant fish and not getting the distance required and casting constant backlashes is extremely irritating and takes all the pleasure out of a days fishing.

Usually when I went to a spot where the fish are generally far from shore, I would choose a different rod and reel for that purpose.

    • Good casting including distance, is factor of much more then the reel, in fact I am
      inclined to want to argue it's the lesser one.
    • Experience of the caster and familiarity with the rig is the biggest factor.
    • The balance of the whole rig is critical, Rod type, length and strength, line weight,
      line
      diameter, placement of the reel, cast control etc. casting weight and even shape.
    • Finally the strength of the caster, you need to do gym work.

The reason why I would instinctively choose a reel with a bigger arbour is because it will release more line per revolution of the spool and when casting mono you want this in a controlled manner.  You want slack line or a few loose coils of line on the spool.

[the rockfish ninja]

Most of the distance casting competitors use Diawa Millionaire & ABU 6500 reels. I think over the years of trial & error they've narrowed it down to the size & shape of spool that performs best for distance.

For a while in my surfcasting days I was using a narrow spool Avet and it was really hard to manage backlashes at first, although I got the hang of it after a while, but the RPMs of the narrow spool seemed really fast at the beginning of the cast and hard to control. Went back to a wider spool reel eventually.

The two reels sound like good choices. Both BB reels of respected quality level. Do you happen to have data on the diameter and width of the spools of those two reels? I don't own and have never owned either one.

Sorry no, I've also never owned either reel, but the specs should be out there on the web.

[jurelometer]

So limiting factors might be what... maybe torsion on the spool and frame, and difficulty in guiding the line on the spool, and a large angular moment twisting the reel seat when retrieving, flexing and bending of the spool spindle and even the spool itself... what else? Obviously you can't go totally off the chain with spool width, or else there would be extremely wide custom reels in competition use. It's nothing to make a frame wider and turn a wider spool. Well, says the guy who hasn't done it yet.

Too wide and the line will oscillate from side to side as it flies off the spool.  This will cause more line impact on the guide frames.  While we obsess with friction on the guide rings, this is actually negligible.  But physics tells  us that energy lost from  impact is much more substantial.  And the line can actually "back up", looping around the frame a little if the spool that is pushing out line faster than the payload can pull it. 

There are also a few more elements, like more friction between the coils on the spool.  When the line gets near the sides, it is being pulled more across the adjacent coils, instead of straight out.

Would adding say a half inch of width to a reel like the 140, with a frame that could handle it, be beneficial, or is it already at a "golden ratio" configuration? It puzzles me that a common modification to a 140 is to make it narrower. Turning a custom spool doesn't look particularly challenging, nor the spindle for it. Widening the frame slightly, likewise, doesn't seem like it would be difficult, particularly if you don't expect to be fighting really ginormous fish with the reel. And yet modders are making their squidders narrower, and not wider.

The standard width models were much more popular back in the day.  They held the right amount of mono of the right size, and had the best spool dimensions for casting.

The stock narrow widths are not so narrow that they cast badly, and the line capacity is more reasonable with thinner line, so a better match for modern braid, and not a bad choice if you want to cast with braid.

IMHO- around here,  there is a bit of super-extra-narrow customization as a fetish thing, but there are legitimate purposes. For example, if you want a drop jigging reel that does not need good casting performance,  a very narrow spool makes leveling the line as you wind much easier.  These would be my last choice for casting performance.

And not to take my own thread off topic, but wouldn't a larger arbor in the hypothetical wider spool stiffen the spool and lighten the line load enough to make casting better, as long as the spool would still hold sufficient line for a max cast? I am pretty sure I will never make a 250 yard cast, so if I have 350 yards or so of line on a wide spool having a relatively large diameter arbor, couldn't that be a possible performance boost?

The arbor size mostly affects line capacity and potentially filled spool weight. A larger arbor makes the spool walls shorter, and can add less weight than filling the spool  with unwanted line.  But the weak point on flexing is actually going to be the spindle.

Back to the original topics, a bit more on spool height:

When you launch the cast, the payload has the greatest stored energy and is moving at its fastest. It will be continuously slowing down throughout the cast. It is impossible  for it to speed up.  A taller, heavier spool acts more like a flywheel.  The greater moment of inertia causes it to  store  energy (slowing the payload) as it starts to spin up, which it later releases through the cast, meaning that the line will later be leaving the spool faster than the payload can pull it.  Nobody would design a cast control mechanism that worked this way.

 Having said this,  I am not going to argue with Cornelius about a taller spool casting "better" in some actual fishing situations for some folk.  I could definitely see it reinforcing some good habits like casting more smoothly and not overloading the blank. The human doing the casting is part of the equation.

For my lure fishing, I am going with the lightest spool possible that has something close to the typical diameter/ratio for casting.  This is why I also prefer casting with star drags over lever drags. While it is possible to design a light lever drag spool assembly (and Avet is better than most), lever drags tend to have heavy ire spools with more junk attached to them.

-J

[MarkT]

Square reels with the spool as tall as it is wide do well. People who are better casters with a too narrow or wide reel will still cast better than you with an 'optimal' reel!

[Swami805]

I'm with MarkT, I like a reel that is square or cube shape, just personal preference.
 I know in Hawaii they use wide reels for distance casting for ulua from shore, I believe they use mono, at least they used to.
There was a time I think in South Africa they would fish tuna from shore and Penn made a 49A which was a wide 49. There's a thread or 2 on here somewhere
Dimensions of the reel are pretty much situation dependent, what might work for one type of fishing can worthless in another