Field Guide
Full-frame vs. open-frame fly reels
Somewhere between the reel case and the register, a voice will suggest that the full-cage reel is the serious man's choice, in the same tone once used for four-wheel drive and double-bit axes. It is worth knowing exactly what the cage does before you pay for it. It solves one problem completely — a problem you almost certainly do not have.
The difference, held in the hand
Turn the two over in the light and the matter explains itself. An open-frame reel — which is to say nearly every modern trout reel, the Lamson Liquid S and the Ross Animas among them — leaves a narrow gap between frame and spool rim, and in exchange the maker gives you a larger arbor and less weight for the same money. A full-frame reel closes that gap with an unbroken ring of metal all the way around, the way the old salmon reels were built, so that nothing whatsoever can pass between spool and frame. More metal, a little more weight, a little more money. And one specific virtue: a door that thin line cannot sneak through, because there is no door at all.
The problem the cage was built for
Very thin line under slack and tension by turns — the skinny running line behind a spey angler's shooting head, the level mono some modern nymph fishermen favor, gel-spun backing paying out fast — can find the gap in an open frame at exactly the wrong moment and wedge there, and for the angler who feeds coils of such line through his hands all day on a big two-handed river, that jam is a when and not an if. So the cage rules the spey world honestly, and holds court in corners of saltwater and competition nymphing besides. It is not stronger and it is not smoother. It is simply sealed against a particular small disaster that belongs to particular kinds of fishing.
Why the trout angler may pass by
A weight-forward floating trout line is a stout piece of plastic, thick as baling twine at its thinnest, and it cannot wedge into the gap of any decently made reel any more than a garden hose can slip under a door. In all nine of the outfits we keep there is not one fishing situation where the cage would earn its extra ounce — and ounces are a currency we spend carefully, for the same reason we keep the $400 reel out of the beginner's budget: the hand that lifts the rod four thousand times a day feels every one of them. The consensus on this is almost embarrassingly quiet. Trout anglers who fish full-cage reels fish them because they love how they look, and that — let the record show — is a perfectly honorable reason to own a fishing thing. We only decline to dress it up as performance.
Choosing, plainly
If your fishing is trout with a floating line, take the open frame and the lighter, larger arbor it buys, and think no more about it. If you have gone down the euro-nymphing road far enough to fish a level line all season, the cage argument begins to hold a little water, and you will know when it does. If the two-handed rods and their running lines have claimed you, the full frame is simply correct, as it has been for a hundred years. And if what you truly want is the look of your grandfather's Pflueger hanging at your hip — the honest bar-stock echo of the reels in the old photographs — then buy the caged reel gladly and call it what it is. Sentiment is a real specification. We have confessed as much ourselves, in writing, where the click-pawl reel lives.
What to weigh instead
If reel worry has you lingering at the case, spend the worry where it pays: a sealed drag, because grit and winter are the actual enemies; a spool that spins true without wobble; a retrieve that swaps easily to your left hand or your right; and a maker who answers the warranty telephone with a human voice. All four of those are bought for about $150, and the whole argument stands written in what a beginner should spend on a reel. The frame question, for trout, is settled. It was settled before you walked in.
The Gear Finder has already made this call for every setup it builds — open frames throughout, for the reasons above.
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