Richard Isaacs
Senior Member & Supporter
With the great Garry Mills.
It’s a long post or story if you like so if you get board easy, maybe read something else
Last winter i bought a reel from our float rod guru Chris Jones which, if you’ve seen my previous posts, particularly from the trent, I’ve been battering the life out of. It was bought to cover some niggles that I have with centrepins. The reel in question was a kingpin zeppelin 4.75 mk1 and the biggest attraction to me for this particular reel was its dimensions.
Medium width of 3/4 inch, an arbor size of over 4 inch and generally it’s a very solid, fast retrieval bearing pin that ticked a lot of boxes.
However my strive for perfection made me pick up the phone 5 months ago and give Garry a call. It was a long call.
I wanted a centrepin that ticked every box for me perfectly. Now I’m not sharing an exact specification simply because it’s not relevant.
Its perfect but it’s only perfect for me and it’s a complete 1off never to be replicated again. I’d like to keep it that way. But my wish list was very specific and the best thing was Garry not only said yes to building this for me exactly but he also advised and put in some of his own suggestions on top to make it come together even better.
This pin is for 1 task. Big fish, trotting big floats up to a very long distance in powerful rivers.
So I wanted a black pin. Black for 2 reasons. 1….. its understated and not “hey I’m here hello” like some of these ridiculously blingy things you see.
2 …. Black is 1 of just a couple of colours that can be anodized in type 3 extra hard. Basically the finish is a lot more durable
Strength and light weight were thought about a lot which made me go down the 12 spoke and 18 line pillar route. The line pillars are slightly stepped up in diameter to deal a little more with big fish a long way down in heavy flows.
The Line pillars on this are the same and configured in the exact same way as Garry builds the specific pin for dead baiting and big pike so it’s crazy strong and the 12 spoke design reduces the additional weight that a solid back flange would add.
It was really difficult to decide between 6 or 12 spokes because there’s advantages in both but seen as I don’t use my fingers between spokes to return floats, wanted to shave some additional weight that was added from the stepped up pillars and 12 spokes to me looks a bit better that’s the way I went. But it was very close either way.
After this it was about sizes.
I will have no trouble sending a float down the river like the Trent as far as my eyes can see. This can be 60-70 yards. At a 1:1 gear ratio and even with a good return technique. It’s a laborious, time consuming task bringing a float back from that distance especially if the river is pushing through. To me this is dead fishing time and during the course of the day it all adds up.
I have my line pillars set very high in the flanges to create a line lay diameter pretty much equal to that offered on the zeppelin.
This makes a huge difference to minimizing my dead fishing time.
The over all dimensions were based on the zeppelin but tweaked to make it even better for me and just fit exactly around my hands and how I hold and operate it.
A lot of time was spent playing with pins on rods deciding where and how big stuff needs to be.
Along with return speed the line diameter was very specific for another reason.
It will return exactly 1 yard of line for exactly 3 turns of the handle based on a mean spool diameter which I worked out before giving Garry the dimension. This makes putting 100yards of line on the spool very easy along with the fact it’s useful to quickly calculate trot distances too while in situ. The width is not quite 1 inch but slightly bigger than 3/4 and the overall diameter is slightly smaller than the zeppelin at 4.75 inches but generally the 2 are dimensionally quite similar.
Check lever. I use the check lever all the time on my reels but very rarely will you ever hear them click. For me It is just a spool brake and is the area where the zeppelin mk1 fails drastically because I can’t operate this with 1 hand. I use the check on my reels every time i do a bait change, land a fish make a change to the tackle etc etc, this lever is on and off all day long just to simply stop the spool from moving while im doing something else and it’s absolutely crucial it is positioned on the rim of the back plate, be big enough and really accessible for me to operate with the same hand I use to to hold the rod. Completely 1 handed full operation of the full pin is paramount especially
wading.
So it had to be a Bob James check design. It’s by a mile my personal favorite of any pin I’ve ever used but I improved this check lever design further for me with a slightly stronger spring and a cap that matches the reel handles.
There’s gonna be haters of that long check lever I’m sure, but it’s for me an area of perfect customization as it perfectly suited to the way I use a pin.
After this it’s fairly standard stuff baring one of my favorite custom additions that was actually suggested by Gary.
I hate the fact that cpins don’t have something to clip your line to. So most of us use elastic bands or rap it round something half a dozen times. ……
Not anymore. I have special little handles with rubber o rings pressed into them. Simple but very clever little design that I just had to have without hesitation.
Take your line end and just rap it half a turn round the handle and let it slip into the slot where the o ring sits.
Job done. 100 times better than elastic bands etc.
That’s the reel covered … next post will detail the experience it’s self. Coming Later on!
It’s a long post or story if you like so if you get board easy, maybe read something else
Last winter i bought a reel from our float rod guru Chris Jones which, if you’ve seen my previous posts, particularly from the trent, I’ve been battering the life out of. It was bought to cover some niggles that I have with centrepins. The reel in question was a kingpin zeppelin 4.75 mk1 and the biggest attraction to me for this particular reel was its dimensions.
Medium width of 3/4 inch, an arbor size of over 4 inch and generally it’s a very solid, fast retrieval bearing pin that ticked a lot of boxes.
However my strive for perfection made me pick up the phone 5 months ago and give Garry a call. It was a long call.
I wanted a centrepin that ticked every box for me perfectly. Now I’m not sharing an exact specification simply because it’s not relevant.
Its perfect but it’s only perfect for me and it’s a complete 1off never to be replicated again. I’d like to keep it that way. But my wish list was very specific and the best thing was Garry not only said yes to building this for me exactly but he also advised and put in some of his own suggestions on top to make it come together even better.
This pin is for 1 task. Big fish, trotting big floats up to a very long distance in powerful rivers.
So I wanted a black pin. Black for 2 reasons. 1….. its understated and not “hey I’m here hello” like some of these ridiculously blingy things you see.
2 …. Black is 1 of just a couple of colours that can be anodized in type 3 extra hard. Basically the finish is a lot more durable
Strength and light weight were thought about a lot which made me go down the 12 spoke and 18 line pillar route. The line pillars are slightly stepped up in diameter to deal a little more with big fish a long way down in heavy flows.
The Line pillars on this are the same and configured in the exact same way as Garry builds the specific pin for dead baiting and big pike so it’s crazy strong and the 12 spoke design reduces the additional weight that a solid back flange would add.
It was really difficult to decide between 6 or 12 spokes because there’s advantages in both but seen as I don’t use my fingers between spokes to return floats, wanted to shave some additional weight that was added from the stepped up pillars and 12 spokes to me looks a bit better that’s the way I went. But it was very close either way.
After this it was about sizes.
I will have no trouble sending a float down the river like the Trent as far as my eyes can see. This can be 60-70 yards. At a 1:1 gear ratio and even with a good return technique. It’s a laborious, time consuming task bringing a float back from that distance especially if the river is pushing through. To me this is dead fishing time and during the course of the day it all adds up.
I have my line pillars set very high in the flanges to create a line lay diameter pretty much equal to that offered on the zeppelin.
This makes a huge difference to minimizing my dead fishing time.
The over all dimensions were based on the zeppelin but tweaked to make it even better for me and just fit exactly around my hands and how I hold and operate it.
A lot of time was spent playing with pins on rods deciding where and how big stuff needs to be.
Along with return speed the line diameter was very specific for another reason.
It will return exactly 1 yard of line for exactly 3 turns of the handle based on a mean spool diameter which I worked out before giving Garry the dimension. This makes putting 100yards of line on the spool very easy along with the fact it’s useful to quickly calculate trot distances too while in situ. The width is not quite 1 inch but slightly bigger than 3/4 and the overall diameter is slightly smaller than the zeppelin at 4.75 inches but generally the 2 are dimensionally quite similar.
Check lever. I use the check lever all the time on my reels but very rarely will you ever hear them click. For me It is just a spool brake and is the area where the zeppelin mk1 fails drastically because I can’t operate this with 1 hand. I use the check on my reels every time i do a bait change, land a fish make a change to the tackle etc etc, this lever is on and off all day long just to simply stop the spool from moving while im doing something else and it’s absolutely crucial it is positioned on the rim of the back plate, be big enough and really accessible for me to operate with the same hand I use to to hold the rod. Completely 1 handed full operation of the full pin is paramount especially
wading.
So it had to be a Bob James check design. It’s by a mile my personal favorite of any pin I’ve ever used but I improved this check lever design further for me with a slightly stronger spring and a cap that matches the reel handles.
There’s gonna be haters of that long check lever I’m sure, but it’s for me an area of perfect customization as it perfectly suited to the way I use a pin.
After this it’s fairly standard stuff baring one of my favorite custom additions that was actually suggested by Gary.
I hate the fact that cpins don’t have something to clip your line to. So most of us use elastic bands or rap it round something half a dozen times. ……
Not anymore. I have special little handles with rubber o rings pressed into them. Simple but very clever little design that I just had to have without hesitation.
Take your line end and just rap it half a turn round the handle and let it slip into the slot where the o ring sits.
Job done. 100 times better than elastic bands etc.
That’s the reel covered … next post will detail the experience it’s self. Coming Later on!
.