It really is important to understand gear ratio when selecting a fishing reel. It affects everthing from the speed of your retrieval to action of your lure and even the fatigue you experience on a day of fishing due to how much you have to crank that handle.
No doubt you've heard the term gear ratio come up when talking about fishing reels. If you don't know, gear ratio is the amount of turns the spool makes to each turn of the handle.
So a 7.1:1 ratio means that the spool will turn 7.1 times when you turn the handle one full rotation.
This is important to perfect the technique that you need to be working at the time, based on your fishing conditions. If the bite is responding to slower action lures, then you want to have a lower gear ratio reel to get that slow action out of your lure.
The lower gear ratio should also be used when you need to muscle fish out of thick cover as it will provide more torque to get that bass back to the boat.
The flip side of that is using a higher gear ratio when you need to burn your lures through the water in order to provoke a reaction strike. Or if you are fishing around areas where a fish can run after the hook up and get your line tangled in brush and other frustrating obstacles. You'll want to get them out of the area quickly and into your boat.
Most spincast and spinning reels offer only slower gear ratios. If you want anything over 5:1 then you'll need to look at baitcast reels which offer both slow and fast gear ratios.
Hope we've been able to shed some light on gear ratios and their uses for you.
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Happy Bass Fishing!
