Many of you know that I service and maintain the fishing tackle for Camp Barnabas, a nearby summer camp for disabled kids. Most of their tackle is the cheapest variety of Chinese Shakespeare's and Zebco's. For the 2016 season, I decided to try to upgrade their tackle a bit, and provided some 6 Johnson graphite reels, with thanks to Chad B. for a generous donation.
When I collected their equipment at the end of the 2016 season, I was stunned and, frankly, a bit outraged, that nearly all of those graphite Johnson reels were unusable, front and back covers missing, nothing but parts.
For 2017, I resolved "No more good stuff", so the Camp got the cheapest stuff I could round up. I still felt the kids deserved better, and over the winter, I began to wonder if the Century 100B reels might a better choice. Yeah, they're old, and parts are a bit of a problem, but they're built like an M1A1 Abrams tank and they're easy for Skip to work on. Plus, the only part readily removable without tools is the front cover. A phone conversation with Al cemented my resolve to give Johnson's another shot. For the 2018 camping season, I'll introduce a pilot program of a handful of Century 100B's and see how they survive. Don't care if the front cover looks like the reel has been dragged through a gravel pit behind a Jeep Wrangler, don't care if it has a 1967 pushbutton and a '78 crank handle, as long as it casts, retrieves and the drag works. Not spending over $15, in my mailbox for complete reels. Donations of complete reels or parts are welcome.
