Several months ago I was sitting down in my barn where I store my boat and was spooling all of my reels up with fresh fishing line and a guide client of mine saw me sitting out there and stopped by to chat while I was working on getting all of this done.
He was laughing at me respooling my reels because I had a “Hello Kitty” pencil I had commandeered from my daughter stuck through the center of the spool of line and was holding the spool with the pencil stuck between both of my big toes and was spooling up my reels. After a considerable amount of “ribbing” from him and a very lengthy conversation about how I had been spooling that way for years he left. Leaving me to ponder whether I was the only oddball in the world that held my spools of line with my feet while I was respooling.
It wouldn’t be the first time I was accused of being an oddball so I didn’t worry about it to much. I came to terms with the fact that I was a weirdo and decided to let my “freak flag” fly many years ago and don’t worry too much about what others think, Mrs Redneck does enough of that for the two of us so I am probably covered.
A few days later I came home one day and there was a box sitting on my porch with a note that read “Chad, Try this, it works much better than your funky toes”. I opened the box and found a Berkley Portable Line Spooling Station
in the box along with a new reel (this guy had previously thrown one of mine in the lake so he was replacing it).
I had seen the Berkley Portable Line Spooling Station online a few times but never considered buying one because it seemed “normal” to just use my toes.
I have been driving through around with these thing in the back of my truck for a couple of months now and haven’t had the opportunity to use it until now because I haven’t respooled any reels lately. The recent “cool front” has gotten me into the “I better get ready for Fall and Winter catfishing” mode so I decided I needed to start getting my gear ready.
I typically spend a lot of time in September, especially when the lake is turning over to get all of my gear ready and my boat ready for the amazing fishing that is quickly approaching.
Berkley Portable Line Spooling Station Review
The station is nice and compact, weighs about two pounds and is made almost entirely of plastic (with a few small metal components and at first glance is pretty simple in it’s design and function. One end has a reel seat where the fishing rod is mounted, the other end has a removable arm that holds the spool of fishing line. The back has a paper card attached that has the instructions, which is pretty handy but I suspect might not stay on long if stored in a boat.
There is also a Berkley Line Stripper mounted within the spooling station which can also be purchased separately. The line stripper is a very handy tool in itself and in my opinion is essential for spooling fishing reels with fresh line, making it a much easier task to strip all of the fishing line from the reel in a matter of seconds.
The arm that holds the line is removable and the design allows the arm to be stored where it will lay flat (presumably for easier more compact storage and to prevent it from breaking in storage). Overall I can see the entire station easily fitting inside one of the compartments on my boat. I never respool reels on the water because I carry a minimum of one dozen rods and reels at any given time, but for someone carrying fewer rods, I can easily see where this would be stored in a boat compartment for quick on the water use.
The first time around the arm was a little awkward to remove and replace from it’s storage location but after I did it a couple of times it became an easier process.
The reel is placed in the plastic reel seat on the spooling station and this is an easy process with no complications.
The spool of line is placed on the metal arm for holding the line and there are two small springs with knobs that are placed on either side. These are to provide tension to the spool of fishing line to keep it from spinning too quickly in the spooling process.
I typically buy my Offshore Angler Tight Line
in large spools but the system will not accommodate the larger spools that I had because the hole in the center was much larger than the arm that holds the line, making it impossiible to use the larger spools. I am going to play around with taking a large wooden dowel that will fit the inside of the spool and drill a hole out of the center of it and see if I can “hack” this so it will work. Most people don’t buy these large spools like I do so I suspect for most it will probably not be an issue.
The line is attached to the fishing reel and then you reel just like you would when catching a fish, allowing it to spool. I had to make a couple of adjustments to the tensioner to get it working correctly.
Overall the system performed very well and actually made this a much easier process for me. I liked being able to sit at a table and work (versus holding the line with my feet) and liked the functions of the product, overall I was very pleased.
The Good:
- Portable and compact
- Easy to use
- Inexpensive
- Made the whole process much easier
The Bad
- Cannot handle large spools of fishing line (but I think I can correct with a dowel)
- A little awkward the first couple of attempts until I got a good feel for the tension on the line
Recommendation:
Overall I think the Berkley Portable Line Spooling Station is a great product and it did exactly what it said it would do, and made the whole process much easier. It was also much more comfortable using this system instead of holding the line with a pencil through it with a stick.
Here is a quick video review and product walk through that I did on this nifty little tool! This is a high quality HD video so if you have trouble getting it to play on slower connections you can watch the lower quality video.
High Quality
Low Quality (Had to compress due to Youtube limitations)
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About Chad
Hey chad, I think you could take an old small empty spool and cut it in half and put on sides of larger spool and it would work . Let me know if you dont understand what im talking about and ill try and explain better.
Hadn’t thought of that. Thanks for the advice. I might give that a try.
Chad your not the only one that spools that way I have been doing it like that my whole life my dad taught me to do it that way , maybe I will try one of those out been looking at them but I soon just do it the old fashion way. My daughter calls it using your monkey toes lol
I use my feet, but never actually used a pencil. I have a laminate floor in my living room. I just set the spool on the floor and put both feet over it where it is held under the balls of my feet and then reel it in. With the price of that spooling station, I’m tempted to upgrade!
I actually purchased one of these units this spring but ended up returning it due to a couple of issues. One major issue was the fact that the larger spools didn’t work with the station. I also thought about trying to hack this, but for a thirty dollar purchase I didn’t like the idea of having to modify it to get it to work for me. The main issue I had though was with the Line Stripper. This thing was an exercise in frustration since it kept winding the line around itself instead of just stripping it straight off. This was due to the fact that the spools I were trying to strip did have alot of line memory, so it naturally wanted to curl around the stripper mechanism. I ended up taking it back to Bass Pro Shop along with a bag of reels and the spool of line that I had purchased at the same time I purchased the station. Bass Pro Shop respooled every reel for me for free. They perform this service for free as long as you purchase the line from them. I have since taken the same spool that I originally purchased back along with a few reels several times and they get them done in about thirty minutes or so on a busy Saturday afternoon. Another advantage of letting them do this is that they also properly take care of recycling the used line. If you do your own respooling they also have a drop box where you can drop in your old line to recycle on your next trip. Good Fishing folks.
I have been using the line strippers for yours and cannot imagine not using one. The trick to the issue with the line spooling around it is to hold the side where the line comes out down towards the floor and give it a little shake every now and then to keep the line off, then there are no issues.
I also figured out a way to correct the issue with the spools being too big. I will post a follow up video soon.
Indoors the foot control and pencil will work, but outside the neighbors are a distraction. I finall found a way to sit at my desk, put the line in the top side drawer and spool away. I think only the dogs laugh at me now. Good information.
BOb
That’s a pretty involved setup there.
Chad I missed the part of the article where spooling with a pencil & your toes was bad! Or do I need to get up on the times too! Just kidding.
I guess I was behind the times so I can’t say anything either.
I put the spoll of line in a 5 gal. bucket of water thread line through rod eyes then on to real using a square knot cranking reel till it is full. This works good for me. Been doing this for twenty are thirty years.
Works fine with bait casting reels, but not very well with spinning reels. Line spools off of spool and gets tangled in the tension spring that holds the spool! Can’t recommend to anyone for spinning reels.
Thanks for the feedback. I don’t own any spinning reels so I was unable to test.
Took me a little while to get it down, but I’ve been using mine since 2005, and I really can’t see not having one anymore. One key point is to make sure your spool of line is as centered as it can be, so that you get an even winding on your reel. If I take my time to make sure it’s centered, then I am happy with the end result. I really dig this station.