red truck premium fly reels
A fly reel is just for holding fly line…right? Do I really need a disc-drag? At Red Truck Fly Fishing Company we’ve heard questions like these for the last twenty-six years. The honest answer is “No.” A fish can be caught on lesser tackle. But when it comes to a fish of a lifetime, do you really want to finish your fish story with an excuse born of faulty gear? To the committed core, fly fishing is as necessary as air: It’s therapy, sport and religion all rolled into one happy package. And for the avid fly angler, fishing with questionable equipment is not an option. With this in mind, we developed our Red Truck Premium series of fly reels, because we were listening to you…our customer.
You asked for a no-nonsense fly reel built for battle with all the proven and necessary performance needed to land big fish. We did our homework, researched our favorite fly reels, which we’ve sold for the past 26 years, and began to design our response. During this project, we continually asked ourselves, “Does this fly reel deserve to exist?” We employed our hard-working, professional guides to test our reels and challenge our thinking. The result is a series of fly reels that offer straightforward, honest performance, lacking all that we feel is unnecessary. Without doubt, the Premium deserves to exist!
The Premium has it all. Unlike inferior reels, the Premium is fully-machined from solid bar-stock, aircraft-grade aluminum. Machining is far superior to casting or molding. Tolerances are tighter for a better fit of spool to frame. Structural integrity is increased, allowing for more aggressive porting, reducing weight but not effecting overall strength. Every Red Truck Premium is then anodized in either gold or black. Anodizing is an electro-chemical process that, unlike painting, forces the finish into the base material of the fly reel. This finish reduces scratches and dings keeping your new reel looking…well, new. Anodizing also provides for a long life in corrosive saltwater environments.
The Premium’s large-arbor spool has three main advantages: Firstly, with each revolution of the fly reel’s spool, more fly line is returned. This higher line retrieve has a solid advantage when fighting hard-charging fish. Secondly, when storing fly line around a larger diameter hub, there is noticeably less line coil or “memory.” Less coiling of fly line means easier casting and improved distance. Finally (and often forgotten), a large arbor spool keeps your drag setting constant during a long fish run. When using a standard arbor spool, as the diameter of the backing reduces, torque (drag) is increased. To compensate this effect, an angler must reduce this drag by constantly adjusting the setting, during the battle. A large arbor spool almost completely negates this effect. On a long fish run, the drag setting remains constant, requiring no adjustment.
Of course our Red Truck Premium fly reels needed a premium drag system. For this we chose the proven draw-bar cork disc-drag. It’s actually quite simple. Once the spool is mounted on the reel’s frame, a machined stainless steel spindle is then slotted through the center of the spool and the frame. The end of the draw bar is then threaded into the infinitely-adjustable, captive drag knob, located on the back of the reel. As the drag knob is tightened, the dimpled back side of the spool is compressed against the butter-smooth, cork disc plate creating drag pressure. For our Premium reels, we chose compressed cork as the drag plate surface material. Cork is a well-proven, organic material that creates a consistent, smooth and durable plane of contact with the spool. Cork requires only the occasional application of neat’s-foot oil for smooth performance and a long life.
At Red Truck, we didn’t forget the little things. The Premium is simple to convert to left or right hand retrieve without tools. Just slide the drag plate up the reel spindle and flip the pawl. We even added two counter balance weights (one external, one internal) to the Premium’s spool for the ultimate in smooth performance. Acoustically, our Premium is a virtuoso. We worked hard on making this series of reels pleasurable to listen to. When retrieving line, the reel sounds solid as the pawl “walks” atop the drag plate’s teeth. When hooked to a hard-charging fish, the outgoing click announces the fun. Don’t want an outgoing sound? Just flip down the spool’s pawl and voila. And when it comes to saltwater use, we didn’t cut any corners. Unlike some less expensive so-called saltwater fly reels with exposed bearing clutches, the Red Truck Premium employs three fully-sealed bearing races. These fully-sealed races make for silky smooth performance, require no lubrication and keep saltwater where it belongs…in the ocean.
Wrap up your new Red Truck Premium fly reel in a padded nylon reel pouch for safe storage. If a bumpy truck or skiff ride is in your future, you can attach our Premium reel pouch while the reel is mounted to your favorite rod.
Of course our Red Truck Premium fly reels were cosmetically crafted to visually compliment our Red Truck Premium and Diesel fly rods, but these reels will look great on any quality fly rod. Our Premium reels are available in anodized gold or black to suit your personal “bling” factor.