The Baitcasting Reel – Part One

Baseball, hotdogs.  Beer, peanuts.  Winter, snow.  Certain words and images bring a Pavlovian response when said or seen.  In most cases the response doesn’t define the original word or image, but in the case presented today, baitcasting reels are the definition of bass fishing.  Today in The Baitcasting Reel – Part One, we’re going to investigate the history of the baitcasting reel and its parallel path of maturity with bass fishing.  Both of which are 100-percent American.

In this series we’re going to look back at how anglers practiced bass fishing before the baitcasting reel, who were the first major players in developing the baitcasting reel, and then run through the innovations from the turn of the 19^th century through today.  I know many of you will be surprised how the baitcasting reel has evolved over the last 200 years.

Before Baitcasting

Prior to the advent of the baitcasting reel, most serious anglers plied the waters with either a fly rod or a cane pole.  The case of the cane pole was simple.  The line, generally the length of the pole itself, was either tied to the end of the pole or threaded down the inside of the cane and tied off at the butt of the pole.  The cast was generally an underhand lob.

Around the turn of the 18^th century, English reel makers started developing free-running, wooden-spooled reels as makeshift casting reels.  These reels, known as Knottingham reels, were one of the forerunners to the baitcasting reel as were the “click,” and multiplying winch reels also made in England.

Paris to Frankfort

By 1835 another watchmaker, from Frankfort, Kentucky, by the name of Jonathan F. Meek took to making reels.  Within a couple years Jonathan’s younger brother Benjamin F. Meek started working with him.  Together and sometimes alone, they produced what would become the definition of the Kentucky Baitcasting Reel.

These early reels were all made from either brass or German Silver, which was an alloy of copper, nickel, and zinc.  The only steel in the reel was the spool shaft.

Within another decade, several more silversmiths and watchmakers in Frankfort jumped on the Kentucky Reel bandwagon, making Frankfort the home of the Kentucky Baitcasting reel.  Names like Milam, Hardman, Sage, Dalton and Gayle would become synonymous with the Kentucky Reel, elevating the small rural town internationally as the hub of the highest-quality fishing reels in the world.

Every part of these reels was handmade.  There were no production machines to make screws, gears, or even spools.  Nothing was standardized.  In fact, each screw was hand made and numbered as to which screw hole it was to be placed in if the reel was ever serviced.

Not only were screws and other parts not standardized, neither were the reel sizes themselves.  A Number 1 Snyder wasn’t the same size as a Number 1 Meek.  This included spool length and diameter.

Other innovations these gifted craftsmen introduced, besides the adjustable click, and higher gear ratios, were the adjustable spool brake, jeweled end cap bushings, and even a free spool mechanism.

The Reels of Royalty

Because of the handcrafted nature of these reels, they were expensive.  Only the rich could afford them.  For example, a pre-Civil War Meek & Milam reel cost between $13 and $25.  That’s roughly $495 – $950 today.  Considering a pre-War Meek & Milam reel could sell on the auction block today for over $5,000, I think they’ve held their value pretty well.

Due to the bankroll needed to own one of the world’s best reels, a lofty clientele naturally formed.  State legislators, lawyers and doctors, and even presidents of the of United States became customers of the makers from Kentucky.  If you dig in the newspaper archives just a little, you’re able to see the reels presented to presidents Arthur Chester, Grover Cleveland, Benjamin Harrison, William McKinley, and Theodore Roosevelt.  Each were avid anglers and actually owned Kentucky Reels besides the ones gifted to them.

The Kentucky Reel’s heydays were between the years 1815 and 1900.  Although they were continued to be made through the late 1940s, other companies like Shakespeare and Pflueger, with their standardization of manufacturing and assembly line production, offered reels that were within financial reach of the common man.  Eventually the handmade reels from Kentucky that started the baitcasting industry and the sport of bass fishing, died out.

This covers the years, the makers, and the reels that started the baitcasting revolution of the 19th century.  Next, we’ll look at the years 1897 through 1955.  This 58-year time span is when bass fishing and baitcasting was cemented into the lexicon of American Heritage.  It was these years that the blue collar black bass knocked the Ivy League trout off the pedestal as America’s favorite gamefish.

Below is a collection of some of the ads and other pieces I found in the newspaper archives regarding the early Kentucky Reel makers.  Pay attention to some of the ads found in the classified section of the papers.  Theft of Kentucky Reels started in the 19th Century!

References

For those interested, I used the following References in compiling this post.  They are:

1. Hinkebein, W. and Lander, A., A Brief History of Baitcasting, Bass Fishing, and the Kentucky Reel, The Whitefish Press, 2022.
2. Babler, E. J., A History of Baitcasting in America, 2017.
3. Henshall, J. A., The Book of the Black Bass, 8th Impression, 1915.
4. Henshall, J. A., The Book of the Black Bass, 13th Impression, 1923.

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