Electric bicycles, electric skateboards and electric kayaks take the work out of having fun, and now electric fishing reels take the cranking out of fishing. An electric reel uses a small motor to turn the spool and retrieve line. The reel is powered by a battery or plugged into the boat’s power and programmed to automatically retrieve and deploy line. Some reels even jig the lure for you. And when a fish is on the line, these reels have the power to fight faster without breaking the fishing line. Old salts call the electric revolution cheating, but modern anglers embrace any technology that makes fishing easier and more fun.
Higher Power
For years, offshore anglers have used heavy-duty electric reels to retrieve and deploy dredges. A three-tiered dredge pulling 50 rigged mullet creates tons of drag, requiring an electric reel with enough power to pull a grocery cart through the water. Most captains use smaller electric reels to deploy and retrieve squid-chain teasers.
“An electric teaser reel is like an extra deckhand,” Carl Huffman says. Huffman is president of Elec-Tra-Mate, one of the oldest names in the electric reel business. The company recently released two smart teaser reels. The TD-2000 powers two pancake reels to control the teasers, and the system can be installed on any boat’s hardtop. “The reels have a line-out alarm, so if a sailfish grabs the teaser, the captain immediately knows.” For teaser and dredge control, Elec-Tra-Mate’s TD-4000 features four pancake reels: two 8-inch reels for teasers and two 10-inch winches to run the dredges. “The dredge reels are so powerful, they will pull a 200-pound guy off the dock,” Huffman brags, and then laughs when I ask how he tested this claim.
One of the most popular dredge reels is Lindgren-Pitman’s SV1200. The monster electric reels are used for everything from bottomfishing to swordfishing and dredge reels. Tim Pickett, an engineer at LP, says, “Every boat that fished the Skip Smith Custom Boat Shootout had two things in common: diesel fuel and Lindgren-Pitman dredge reels.”
Owners like the versatility. “Mount the reel on a bent butt and switch out blades for swords, bottomfishing or dredge,” Pickett explains.
This year, LP released a DTX version of the reel in a hardtop mount. The system can be mounted to the underside of a hardtop or in a pod on top of the hardtop. To make the teaser reels easier to operate, LP partnered with Garmin. “I can control my teaser and dredge reels from my Garmin multifunction display,” Pickett says. The network can also program the reel with custom line settings to retrieve and deploy dredges and teasers at a set distance from the boat.
Power Move
Big, heavy electric reels have been the go-to for deepwater bottomfishing, but they were hard to handle. With the advancement of lithium-ion batteries and brushless motors, manufacturers are able to put electric motors in smaller reels. Penn’s Fathom Electric Reel Kit won Best of Show at the ICAST fishing-tackle trade show. The kit combines a manageable 30-, 50- or 80-size reel with a rechargeable battery and digital display of depth, auto stop and other functions.
The Fathom’s major innovation is the rechargeable battery, like a cordless drill battery, that eliminates wires, alligator clips and plugs. Ben Joyce, senior product manager at Penn, explains, “The beauty of the Fathom Electric is the reel can be used without connecting to the boat’s power or a 12-volt battery.”
Developing the Fathom Electric involved more than slapping a motor and battery on a conventional reel. “We had to balance torque and power draw until we had a reel with power to fight a fish without draining the battery,” Joyce says. Penn’s diverse pro staff got to test it, doing everything from bottomfishing to kite fishing.
The innovation is made possible by the small, powerful brushless motor. A brushless motor uses a circuit board to control electricity turning a magnetized shaft that drives the reel spool. By eliminating the connection between the brushes and rotor, the brushless motor turns faster with less power. Joyce says, “Our biggest driver was the confidence that a compact battery would be able to power the brushless motor.”
To complement Fathom Electric reels, Penn is releasing a line of matching fishing rods. “We’ll have a rod choice for 3, 5 or 8 pounds of weight,” Joyce says. Matching the rod to the weight of the sinker allows the rod to remain horizontal while fishing. “I can watch the action of the rod tip and immediately see a bite,” Joyce says. Penn will also include a kite rod in the lineup.
Read Next: New Jig Fishing Techniques with Electric Reels
Micro Electrics
The biggest trend in electric reels is really small. Compact, powerful and programmable electric reels are taking light tackle to deepwater fishing. Johnny Steadman, of Johnny Jigs, is leading the charge. “Reeling in a 100-gram jig from 1,000 feet is really tiring,” he sighs.
To fish his jigs, Steadman needed a reel to retrieve the jig when he didn’t get a bite while allowing him to manually work his lure and fight a fish.
He searched high and low for the perfect electric reel. “I spent a lot of money and made a lot of mistakes,” he admits. Domestically available electric reels were too big for light jigging rods, so he looked overseas where he discovered micro electric reels in Japan.
Eventually, Steadman settled on the Daiwa Seaborg 300 and 400 reels. “We’ve put hundreds of hours on the reels,” he says. He matches the reel to a custom slow-pitch rod with a metal butt. “The metal butt allows me to work the rod from the rod holder,” he explains.
He mostly uses the micro electric reel to retrieve the lure from deeper than 500 feet. “I can stick the rod in a holder, and the reel brings in the lure,” he says. The convenience encourages Steadman to change locations when he isn’t catching fish.
To power the reel, Steadman uses a lithium-ion battery in a belt pack or a sling he wears over his shoulders. “The battery system is hands-free and out of the way, with power to last two days on a single charge,” he says.
The setup is light enough to manually operate with the reel handle. Or switch to electric and activate the auto-jigging feature. “I can set one rod to auto jig while I work a second rod,” Steadman says. When a fish hits, he switches to manual power and uses the reel handle to fight the fish to the surface.
With electric motors replacing human power in so many sports, don’t be surprised if everyone is using electric reels in the future. As batteries and reel components are built smaller and tougher, anglers will find more applications for electric reels. Before long, no one will call electric reels cheating— they’ll just call using these reels fishing.
