The old closed face and centerpins are nostalgic, and are great for pleasure fishing, but in matchfishing terms the modern mid priced Daiwa’s do it all and are far superior. That said good anglers have a habit of making what ever they want work, because at the end of the day its nearly all about the feeding!!

Hi Chris, re reels, both will do the job ,its what suits you. Closed face are great for the job once you get used to them ,so are centre pins. Fixed spool can be done but IMO ~naughty
( preparing to get shot down in flames )And use a heavier float.

Plumbing up? ,use a heavier plummet than usual, or run it through trial and error style.

If I am right I think Dave Harrell uses a TD-R, if that’s the case its says it all really.

Fixed spools for me, closed faced reels are to slow on the retrieve and the line release isn’t as smooth.

There you go, say no more.

I wouldn’t take too much notice of what other people do.

Try them both and see what suits you best.

As most of my stick float fishing isn’t done too far out I find a closed face reel preferable.

Conversely, the balsa’s usually fished well out towards the middle and in this instance the line delivery of a fixed-spool is necessary.

The fixed-spool will cover all of the float fishing aspects but for dedicated stick fishing I’d choose a closed-face every time.

As for plumbing the depth, I just lob the plummmet out once to give me a rough idea and then keep running the float through to see where it drags under. You’ll build up a better picture of the swim doing that than keep chucking the plummet in and scaring the fish, especially if the river’s clear.

if you’re trying to plumb up with a waggler on a river, attach your plummet then loop the line around the top of the waggler and aim to get the plummet downstream of the waggler so that the float runs over the top of the plummet.

I prefer to use a close face reel (old abu 506) for close work and an fixed spool for distance float fishing.

open faced reels can have 2 big disadvantages, imho. the spool is too far off the rod for my short fingers to reach in comfort, and the line comes off the spool on to the back of the finger.
open faced(fixed spool) reels have the facility to put the handle on either side and are sold as ambidexterous but are designed and made for right handed people. close faced reels are designed for specific handed use. the large sized abu reels i had where and they sat closer to the hand.
as for fishing at distance, i used them to fish 3/4 across the wide welland.
take a look at both types, but if you hold your rod in the left hand take note of how the line comes off the reel.
good look.