Spent the day today with my new Piscifun Phantom reel that I got from Amazon for like $69. Lots of inexpensive reels are showing up on YouTube including Kastking and Six Gill etc. But one channel "The Reel Test" isn't a paid endorsement and does some good controlled tests. He had really good results on casting distance against some well known Shimanos and Daiwas. I had just trashed one of my reels and needed a new jerkbait setup so I decided to try it. This thing is light. Under 6 oz. The first thing I did was the old table-top spin the spool test. Put both the centrifugal and magnetic brakes on 0 and loosened the spool tension. Spun it hard and it only spun for like 3 seconds. ???? Took it apart and gave it a drop of lube on the bearings and tried again. Same thing. How can a reel that casts better than a Tatula not have a free spinning empty spool? Well, I loaded it up with 12 lb. Red Label and headed to Skinner. Took a few minutes to get the right basic brake settings, but not too bad. Believe it or not, even with the odd table top test result, it casts really well. One thing that adds to odd feeling casts is the super light spool. It takes very little to get it up to speed. That means if you try to really rip it you can get early overrun. Just a nice easy-to-medium cast speed and it'll fly. Smoothness of retrieve is about a 7.5 or so. But for the price it's just fine. I made maybe 100 casts or so, playing with different brake settings using only a Lucky Craft flash pointer which is my go-to jerkbait, so I can't comment on how it will do with more finesse baits. In the end I'm really happy with this inexpensive reel so far. We'll see how it holds up over time.
