One of the best things you can do to make your freshwater fishing adventures more enjoyable is to invest in a High Quality Low Profile Baitcast Reel and there hasn't been a better time than this year! The new 2006 models that have been produced are light years ahead of models manufactured as recently as 2 or 3 years ago! For anglers new to the sport of fishing, let me quickly explain what a Baitcast Reel is.

The current design of a modern Baitcast reel has been designed around the earliest fishing reels that were invented in the late 1800’s. It consisted of a rotating spool which holds fishing line; a clutch to engage the spool; and a handle to reel the line back onto the spool after the cast so you can retrieve your lure or live bait. This invention revolutionized fishing at the time.

In 1896, William Shakespeare Jr., patented a system that allowed the fishing line to be wound evenly back onto the spool of the reel. This was known as the "Level Wind" System. To date, this has been used in just about every type of Baitcast reel made in the world. A simple idea turned into one of the most innovative fishing reels at its time. This led to the formation of his Company which eventually became known as "The Shakespeare Company" And you thought the "famous" William Shakespeare was a writer!

Shakespeare later developed a way to prevent backlashes through the use of a braking system. A backlash is what happens when the spool over runs the line when the angler makes a cast. The speed of the line coming off the spool is slower than the spool’s rotation, causing the line to become a tangled mess inside the reel. This also happens when your lure hits the water, causing the line to stop while the spool is still rotating. Some anglers call this a "bird’s nest" because that’s what it resembles when it happens! Others call it a "Professional Overrun"! Regardless, it usually ends up as a big source of frustration trying to clear the line while your fishing buddy is catching fish!. This is also the origin of "thumbing the spool" where you manually use your thumb to slow & stop the spool just before the lure hits the water which requires some very good thumb-eye coordination!