Surf reels for distance casting

How far you chucking? Lots will disagree with me but in my opinion if your going up to around 80yds I personally don’t think you’ll gain anything from replacing what you have already. For over 80yds then I’ve found that a bigger spool makes a small difference but certainly not as much as some would have you believe. Put it this way, I can cast just as far with a TDA 3500 than I can with a browning 665FD and the difference in spool size is considerable. Retrieving big feeders back however is a different matter, the 1m per turn on the browning makes it seem easier than the 3500 size reel. The best feeder anglers I know use a Certate 3012, not really a huge spool reel.

Blimey baitchef it was that long ago :rolleyes: well I can tell you Alan dove was using a fox reel quite a large one, I think when I had the bream I used a procaster 4000, however we used mono, on fisheries that allow braid (barston doesn’t) however furzton does, I think you can quite easily acheive 70 reel turns with an ordinary match rod and reel when using mono these distances can still be acheived however you have to start using 40 gram and 60 gram method feeders or weight forward feeders, using a distance feeder rod will put more omff into the cast and the distances are much more easily acheived however they are stiffer rods so more care needs to be given when playing fish, the surf reels or big pit reels are required if you intend to spod/spomb at distance although I dare say a shimano 8,000/10,000 baitrunner may be man enough with braid when spodding/spombing at distance. When I give it a go I’ll report back.

Might even be worth asking the carp boys about spodding at distance

You could try one of these, I use these over here in Ireland and they are smooth and have undoubtedly helped me achieve bigger distances.

http://www.askari-fishing.com/pages/productPage.jsf?productid=fishing/reels/allround-reels-2/browning-force-feeder-extreme-reels

No need to invest in new reels if you can reach your target with a distance feeder rod and your normal 4000 reel however you may need a bigger reel for spomb or spod work, still nice reel but how much use would it get?