Florida Bass Fishing Forum
Smallmouth, Largemouth, We're All About Bass!

I know rod length and action for different bass fishing techniques, but I was wondering about reel gear ratio?

What gear ratios are best for swimming a jig, flipping, cranking, etc?

Public Comments

1. crankbaiting, flipping you would want around a 6 to 7 gear ratio because it is faster. i find that it is easier to get a faster gear ratio and just slow my retrieve down but some people have trouble reeling in so slow. hope this helps. i don't worry that much about gear ratio.

2. Low gears. Five-point-one-to-one to five-point-nine-to-one. The lower gear ratio means better cranking power. And better cranking power equals more torque to yank a fish out of the heavy stuff. I use older reels, and they're all less than a six-to-one gear ratio.

Higher gear ratios also wear out faster. And I don't think you'd want your seven-one-to-one gears to take a dump on you while you're fighting a good fish.

3. For jigs I like a ratio in the 7 range. Even though you normally fish a jig slow, you need good cranking power to muscle fish out of the cover and what not. Many times fish will wrap your line around structure at the bottom of the water causing you to not get them in. A higher ratio will allow you to get the fish out of the cover quickly.

I like lower ratios for crankbaits. I feel that fishing a crankbait rather slow is the best way to go more times than not. Reeling them in slower gives them a bit more of an erractic look, which wil trigger more strikes in my opinion. I'm sure some will disagree with my thinking on this but from my experiences I've been better off taking this approach for the crankbaits.

4. Jigs can be fished with anything from a 4.8 to 7.3 gear ratio reel, depending on how you fish them. I'd personally want something about 5.4. Why? I fish jigs slow and I want to make sure I don't reel it in too fast.

Crankbaits are traditionally fished with a 4.3 to 5.8 gear ratio reel. The slower you reel in a crankbait the more side-to-side wobble it has. Low-gear ratio reels help you to fish slower so you can entice a fish into biting.

Plastic worms, like jigs can be fished with anything from a 4.8 to 7.3 gear ratio reel. Like I said with jigs, I like something a little slow so I can fish slower. Some people like a faster ratio so they can get their lure back to the boat fast for another cast.

That's just three-examples but I could go on and on with different techniques and what ratio's work best.

But if you were wanting to buy ONE reel to use everything, just get one with a ratio between 6.1 to 6.4. These reels are not too fast to fish plastics but not too slow to fish a buzzbait. You really get your money's worth with a quality 6.1 to 6.4 ratio baitcaster!

5. I prefer the higher speed reels for all fishing except these three examples here- when cranking, or using large bladed spinner baits I prefer a reel at 5,0 or below.It makes it much easier on you to fish these types of lures if the reel is easier to reel in. The 3rd example is when fishing very heavy cover and need to horse the fish out, a low ratio reel will give you the power to do so. When I first started to use the higher ratio reels for fishing it seemed that every fish I hooked was in the 5lb plus range. Even the 2 lb fish seemed like monsters due to the high speed reels lack of power. I keep a rod and reel just for the spinner bait and crank bait applications.And for the heavy cover when I am fishing in it.