If you fish a lot, you will go through a lot of fishing line in a lifetime. Spooling fishing line on your reel can be a chore you dread or something that simply takes a couple minutes and you move on with your fishing. But a couple of things can be frustrating with fishing line:
- Storing a lot of spools or big spools of line neatly
- Spooling line in the boat
I found two products that I really like that make my life easier when it comes to managing fishing line. I got both products and I’m not sponsored by either one. They just make my life easier so I thought I’d share with other anglers.
The Spoolin Buddy
I first saw one of these about five years ago on Shaw Grigsby’s front deck when we were rigging up to do some filming for Wired2fish. At the time the units were hard to find, but now you can find them at TackleWarehouse and other retailers.
Basically it’s a system of spooling stations depending on how much line you need to store and keep handy for your fishing. Some angler might just have 4 or 5 filler spools of line while others might have 15 spools of bulk line. Luckily anglers can find small Spoolin Buddies and larger capacity Spoolin Buddies. They make them that hold 8 300-yard filler spools or ones that hold a whopping 15 2,000-yard bulk spools.
Assembly
Assembly of the 12-unit Spoolin Buddy I bought from Tacklewarehouse.com took about 10-minutes from unboxing to filling with spools. There are 12 square-bits screws with an included key that quickly screw the 5 pieces of the frame together. Then three long rods are passed through one side and twisted onto a bolt on the other side to form the spool holders.
Capacity
I put 8 bulk spools on two of the rods and a bunch of filler spools on the third rod. I ended up not really liking that many filler spools on one rod. It was a little cumbersome if the line wrapped off the spool and got around the rod. You can alleviate that by pushing spools together, which also gives you great tension when spooling. But the bulk spools on these bigger Spoolin Buddies is definitely the optimal configuration. I bet one of the smaller ones would be much better suited for the filler spools.
Use
You can put the enclosed stickers on the side plates and write the pound test of the spool and type on them so you know what line you’re spooling on in advance. Or you can get your own decals. You can keep the line in order by buying velcro strips to wrap around the spools to keep the line from unwinding when not in use. I just tie my spools off with a simple arbor knot.
I found that when spooling line off the Spooling buddy that if you take and push the other spools on that rod tight against the spool you’re spooling, you get pretty good line tension as you spool.
It works great and is very efficient for spooling up a bunch of rods quickly and neatly. I like that it has a handle on the side so I can grab it off my work bench in the garage and carry it out to the boat and spool up in my boat.
I obviously go through a lot of line testing lines for companies before release, review various new fishing lines for articles and of course fishing 100-150 days a year. So the larger 12-unit Spoolin Buddy was more to my liking for a large number of big spools.
The units vary in price from $64.95 to $129.95 depending on how many spools you want to manage. You can find them at Tacklewarehouse.com or their website, spoolinbuddy.com.
Spool StiX
If that’s out of your price range and you’re just looking for an easy solution to spool line on a reel in your truck, in your garage or especially in your boat, then you might want to check out the Spool StiX. It’s such a simple and effective idea, you’ll wonder why you didn’t have one before.
The unit
The whole Spool StiX is 7 inches long and 3/4 inch wide and deep. It looks like a rectangle piece of aluminum with a cloth side. However a rod is uncovered under a velcro enclosure that folds down at a perfect angle that you can slide a spool onto and spool up your reel quick.
The angle of the rod keeps tension on the spool and also keeps it from spinning off the rod. And the whole thing flips up out of the way and out of sight when not in use.
Use
I tried it a couple different ways. I actually zip tied it to my bench leg in the garage and it worked great like that. Then I installed it in my boat easily with the attached 3m Tape on the backside that holds it firmly in place to the inside hull of a boat. I found it’s equally effective there. Now when a partner gets a wicked backlash (since I obviously never do that), he can sit down and spool up new line in a hurry.
Availability
You can find them on their website, spoolstix.com right now for the price of $23.99 which includes shipping. However it does take a bit of time to get one as their site says it may be two weeks before the ship. But it’s a handy tool that I find myself using more and more to spool up fishing line on my reels.
