Keep in mind I am at very best a novice to fly fishing but I recently went to Cherokee with some coworkers who are far more experienced with fly fishing than I. I have a maximumcatch (which is the same thing as the piscifun) and one of my coworkers had an orvis battenkill. I used his for a little while because I wanted to see what the difference would be and I honestly didnt notice hardly any difference.
Of course like anything else on this site, pride of ownership does play a role. As far as function goes, I think any reel can get the job done to some degree, but you arent going to wow anybody with the amazon reels.
Yep, as an Orvis store owner, I loved the fly fishing snobs who wouldn’t be caught in a stream with anything less than a Hardy or Orvis high end reel on a high end Winston or Orvis rod. Those guys paid the rent. 😂
As for drags, I’ve rarely used them and I fish salt water and bass here in FL. But the few times I’ve used one, the piscifun drag worked fine.
Tarpon and long fast running redfish put a bunch of stress on a drag, and they worked as good as any high end reel I ever used.
