Reeling Demographics... are you a righty or lefty

Reels are the hottest topic for TackleTour. Everyone wants to know what the latest and greatest is and how they compare to the old guard. What's the best for light stuff, or what's your suggestion for heavy cover. Do we really need different retrieve ratios? It's all in here.

Speaking of casting reels only... do you reel with your right or left hand?

I reel with my right hand
451
43%
I reel with my left hand
597
57%
 
Total votes: 1048

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LowRange
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Re: Reeling Demographics... are you a righty or lefty

Post by LowRange » Mon Nov 08, 2021 7:01 am

I use both to some degree but prefer to cast and reel right handed. I use a casting grip when casting and a palming grip when paming the reel. This requires a change in grip positions between casting a palming even when I use my LH reel meaning that both require some degree of hand switching. I actually find it slightly easier to stuff the reel into my open left hand when transitioning to palming a RH reel then to slide might right hand up to palm a LH reel. Both take the same amount of time to accomplish.

I do like the idea of pitching with a LH reel while paming the reel so the grip does not change but every time I try it I find it weird and unnatural to not be able to rest my thumb on the thumb bar to thumb the spool. It just sort of ends up sideways across the spool and frame with the pad of the thumb rather than the tip in contact with the spool. Super weird.

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Re: Reeling Demographics... are you a righty or lefty

Post by Drakestar » Mon Nov 08, 2021 10:53 am

I learned to fish growing up in Germany, but never used a baitcaster back then. I've lived in the US for more years now than I ever lived in Germany, and started throwing BCs when I rediscovered fishing here. I'm a lefty on spinning reels and a righty on baitcasters. (I'm right-handed.)

I agree that it's all about tradition and how you learn things. There's no specific reason that I fish right-handed BCs other than "they were the norm in America, so that's what I bought". So I did that, and it feels natural. Switching between lefty spinning and righty casting reels isn't an issue, either. My 11-year old son is left-handed, but he still uses all of my reels just fine. He just doesn't know any better.

Only issue if when you go fishing with somebody who does the opposite on reels, i.e. any trip with Freelancer27 (left-handed BCs) and me (right-handed BCs) means that we can swap rods just fine to evaluate them, but if either of us hooks into a fish, hilarity ensues because somebody's reeling with the wrong hand ;)

I learned that in Germany, left-handed BCs are the norm, btw. People there find it natural to use their dominant hand to control the rod, and their weaker hand to reel. Personally, I find rod control just as easy with the weaker hand, and feel that horsing a fish to the boat with my dominant hand works well (especially when punching or frogging). None of those are objectively good arguments, though. The US/Germany difference is all cultural in my mind.

Dink Whisperer
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Re: Reeling Demographics... are you a righty or lefty

Post by Dink Whisperer » Sat Jan 29, 2022 7:28 pm

I made the switch to all left handed reels years ago and never looked back. Mainly because I do a ton of flipping, pitching and punching here in FL. That led me to discover left hand reels feel way more natural to me. And I'm right handed for everything else.

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Re: Reeling Demographics... are you a righty or lefty

Post by Tejota Bettio » Tue Apr 19, 2022 2:34 am

I'm left-handed and lefty.

I use right hand reels only when jigging due to the fact that I think I have more sensibility to detect finickily bytes on rubber.

:P

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Re: Reeling Demographics... are you a righty or lefty

Post by LowRange » Wed Apr 20, 2022 9:51 pm

Still use both. Rightys for winching in fish on frogs and for all moving baits. Leftys for bottom contact and plastics. Still have a preference for all rightys on kayak so I can hold the rod with the left while I claw at the water with the paddle to fight wind and boat position. I hat putting a bait where I want it on the perfect cast or skip and then start moving backwards. I live in the mid west. 15 mph wind is "still".

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Re: Reeling Demographics... are you a righty or lefty

Post by dennis_rf » Thu Apr 21, 2022 12:48 am

I believe the odd thing for non-Americans to grasp is, that even though working the bait and fighting a fish with the non-dominant arm/hand is natural and easy if you grew up like that, people are still casting with their dominant hand and then passing the rod over to the other. So the non-dominant seems not as capable as the dominant after all.
But again, that might be just practice and how you grew up. Seems like some are questioning this tradition and are “breaking the cycle” of habit.

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Re: Reeling Demographics... are you a righty or lefty

Post by jvelth74 » Thu Apr 21, 2022 2:05 am

Lefty's in Light and Finesse fishing, specially with one hand rod's. Righty's for heavier use.

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Re: Reeling Demographics... are you a righty or lefty

Post by LowRange » Thu Apr 21, 2022 10:44 am

dennis_rf wrote:
Thu Apr 21, 2022 12:48 am
I believe the odd thing for non-Americans to grasp is, that even though working the bait and fighting a fish with the non-dominant arm/hand is natural and easy if you grew up like that, people are still casting with their dominant hand and then passing the rod over to the other. So the non-dominant seems not as capable as the dominant after all.
But again, that might be just practice and how you grew up. Seems like some are questioning this tradition and are “breaking the cycle” of habit.
I think it stems from the prevalence on palming a baitcast reel with 3 fingers in front of the trigger in the US. You can't cast well while palming the reel with 3 fingers in front of the trigger so a casting grip with one finger on the trigger then a separate palming grip are common. This changing up of grips is the defining action taking place. It doesn't matter if the reel changes hands in the process because the movements are the same. This is why US angler also use left spinning reels. There is no changing of grips between casting and retrieving a spinning reel. This can also cause lefty baitcast reels to feel off to these anglers because the muscle memory from reeling lefty with spinning can cause conflict and require re-training your left hand. Newer angler just starting out don't suffer from this issue it seems.

Now, you CAN cast while palming but you need to use a slightly different grip i find and, in my experience, it's an awful casting technique for distance casting but I'm not super proficient in it and have just been lobbing baits at targets while doing its maybe that improves. So far I have a preference for lefty reels and palming while casting to targets with plastics/jigs a righty preference for long casting, cranking, big baits and frogs. BFS stuff I can do either. The ability to instantly react to a strike in with a palmimg casting tennique is great for close in work in shallow water. The ability to free up your wrist and bomb a cast then switch to palming is great for covering water with baits that have a longer flight time.

My last thing I need to do is re-learn how to pitch while palming. It's like trying to sprint with a cast on for me. I really relied on that upwards wrist snap in my pitches and palming the reel is killing this for me. Just gotta train those muscles.

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Re: Reeling Demographics... are you a righty or lefty

Post by A42pb2 » Sun Jul 30, 2023 12:47 pm

Tried LH reel for punching. My right wrist was doing all the work casting and hopping the bait and the retrieve. I made the switch back to switching reel quick

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Re: Reeling Demographics... are you a righty or lefty

Post by HarryPotter69 » Tue Jan 23, 2024 7:22 am

I am a Lefty but reel with my right hand Kyle
Last edited by HarryPotter69 on Wed Jan 31, 2024 9:23 am, edited 1 time in total.

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Re: Reeling Demographics... are you a righty or lefty

Post by godshippy » Tue Jan 23, 2024 9:09 am

I'm surprised at how many lefty reel users there are! I thought it would have been more 75/25 with the right hand reels dominating.

I cannot for the life of me reel a baitcaster with my left hand. I don't know what it is--I've tried and it's just so difficult, but I reel a spinning reel with my left.

I tried swapping the spinning reel handle to the right side and I just could not impart the action that I wanted. Like this little tiny twitches were near impossible with my left hand; so I swapped the handle back to the left and just fish that way.

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