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Bryon Anderson

Anyone know why...

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...the spools that fly lines come on are made in two pieces that come apart? I'm guessing it's something simple, like it's cheaper to make them that way or something, but I can't see for the life of me what purpose it serves for the purchaser of the line. And I can think of an OUTSTANDING reason NOT to make them that way; namely, the fact that they tend to come apart with line and backing spooled onto them, leaving you with a godawful mess!

 

Last night, I used my "Reel-E-Good" line winder device to remove my 7 wt. line and attached backing from the reel and spool it onto an old fly line spool that I had. When I went to pull the spool off the line winder, it came apart, and the ensuing tangle was so bad that I chucked the whole mess in the trash. (I needed to replace that line anyway, so the only real waste was the backing.) I was really glad my kids weren't home, because I uncorked some of my choicest vocabulary, I can tell you. :)

 

Anyway -- does anyone know for sure why those spools come apart like that? Seems stupid to me...

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ive never given it much thought

 

the factory spool is probably split to allow the user to remove the line as a coil and to install the line on a line winder

 

photo-05.jpg

 

not all winders are "Reel-E-Good" winders

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Can't say exactly. But just makes it easier to get them into nice coils so you can store them easily with out the plastic pieces taking up space is what my reasoning has always been.

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Most likely reason: The factory robots don't "wind" new lines onto the spools. They produce a coil of fly line with the appropriate taper ... then it's dropped onto on half of the spool, then the other half of the spool is "capped" in place. In other words, it makes the production line more efficient.

 

I reuse the spools all the time, and have never had one come apart. But then, I've always been aware of that possibility and worked with the spools to ensure they don't.

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I have had some fly lines that ended up in a god awful tangles from the spool coming apart and other various reasons. I have a very unusual amount of patience (probably from having taught high school for close to 30 years) so, I have always been able to get the lines untangled. First you need several feet of floor space, like an open room. Then, find one end of the line and constantly feed it through the loops and tangles little by little and slowly. As you get more and more of the line free, walk it toward the far wall of the room and keep making large loops on the floor, back and forth. Pretty soon, you will be at the other end of the line and you are untangled. Now wrap it onto the object of your choice (I use an empty coffee can) or start reeling it onto a reel and go and be happy. It works for me buy YMMV.

Joe

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The primrary reason the fly line spools are made so they can come apart is so the line can be removed from the packaging and used to measure how much backing can be wound on the fly reel before the line (with tge backing) will fill the reel without exceeding the capacity of the reel!

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??? flyty ???

How does the spool coming apart allow for measuring backing?

The only way I know how to do backing is to wind the fly line on the reel, gentle tie on your backing, then reel it in until it's filled the spool to desired depth. Then remove the lines (putting them back on empty fly line spools) and reinstalling it one the reel in the proper order with the proper knots.

Separating the product spool doesn't help with this process in any way.

 

How do YOU do it?

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ive never given it much thought

 

the factory spool is probably split to allow the user to remove the line as a coil and to install the line on a line winder

 

photo-05.jpg

 

not all winders are "Reel-E-Good" winder

Ah....good points, both. That makes sense.

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Can't say exactly. But just makes it easier to get them into nice coils so you can store them easily with out the plastic pieces taking up space is what my reasoning has always been.

Yep, that would make sense, too. I guess it didn't occur to me that people would store lines coiled up but not on a spool or something like a spool. Before I got my line winder, I used to wrap my lines around old coffee cans. Every time I've ever tried to just coil one up by itself, it ended up in a horrific bird's nest.

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I reuse the spools all the time, and have never had one come apart. But then, I've always been aware of that possibility and worked with the spools to ensure they don't.

Yeah....you'd think I'd have learned to do that by now, too. :)

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I have had some fly lines that ended up in a god awful tangles from the spool coming apart and other various reasons. I have a very unusual amount of patience (probably from having taught high school for close to 30 years) so, I have always been able to get the lines untangled. First you need several feet of floor space, like an open room. Then, find one end of the line and constantly feed it through the loops and tangles little by little and slowly. As you get more and more of the line free, walk it toward the far wall of the room and keep making large loops on the floor, back and forth. Pretty soon, you will be at the other end of the line and you are untangled. Now wrap it onto the object of your choice (I use an empty coffee can) or start reeling it onto a reel and go and be happy. It works for me buy YMMV.

Joe

That is exactly what I used to do before I had the line winder -- I would always block out at least an hour to change out a fly line, because it was inevitable that I would end up going through that process at least once! :)

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