Welcome to the Aussiefly Newsletter where we look a bit deeper into fly fishing and tying that the normal quick sweep over. Here we take a look at product reviews, fly tying ideas, fly casting and travel.

Loop Evotec CLWC Fly Reels, review by Uncle Barry

What a great idea!

Have someone who supplies another brands of fly reels review your brand of fly reel. LOOP's Australian agent did just that, which indicated to me they had extreme confidence in the little clear Evotec CLWC 2 Six fly reel.

 

Whilst waiting for the reel to arrive, I told a number of people that I had just ordered one of LOOP's clear baby reels for my 6w rod. This was an attempt to gauge the general fly fishing consumer's ideas about a clear plastic fly reel.

The reaction and comments were unbelievably different from "its only a plastic reel, why would you pay so much for a plastic reel", (from people who hadn't even seen the reel), to a chap who had a friend with the same reel on his 2w rod who considered the CLWC "the state of the art in small fly reels". This fellow had 2 clear reels on order, one for his 6w and the other for his 2w rod, which he uses with a Shooting Head in the saltwater with light tippets.

The reel arrived and upon opening the freight packaging there before me, was a clear thin plastic box and a clear reel. My first thoughts were, "this is a joke, surely". Then after opening the box, and taking this 'joke' reel out, I discovered a beautifully smooth fly reel.

This was the LOOP CLWC fly reel in my hand. This is a very special reel as I have never seen a fly reel that was made clear material and in fact, I have never seen a fly reel packaged in a clear plastic box before.

My first reactions after removing the reel from the box were that this reel is too impossibly light in weight and in fact it is confusing that the reel weighs so little!

The drag adjustment knob has a range through 330degrees, which gives a wonderfully wide range of settings and additionally, the drag is also enclosed and water proof, no matter the ambient temperature.

Spool width to depth is an almost perfect ratio allowing the caster to have their line at maximum retrieval rate at anytime. Once the real testing started it was noticed immediately that the drag was amazingly silky smooth and allowed even1kg tippets to be used without fear and during another test when coupled to a 6w rod and using 5kg tippets in the saltwater, the drag once more excelled in its wide range of settings.

Just one of the special features of this reel series is the adjustable spool (start-up) inertia settings. This feature also stops wind back when casting which is an annoying characteristic that is present on too many reels today. The drag is totally sealed and constructed of discs made of metal och Teflon which allows the reel's drag setting to be extremely stable, no matter the weather conditions.