Home Forums Fishing Freshwater Any non China fishing reels anymore

I try my best not to by Chinese products, but that is hard to do especially when the catalogs won't say where they're products are made. So can you folks list reels made today that are not made in China? Also, is there any American or North American fishing product to look at?

Thanks

What type of reels are you looking for? I know there are saltwater reels made in USA and I’m certain other places that aren’t China. The freshwater market is flooded with cheap junk from China, Korea, and other Asian sweatshop countries, tough to find a bass reel made in the USA.

Mainly freshwater spinning reels, but casting reels too. What are the USA saltwater reels? If they can be had small enough that may be a way to go.

Avet reels are made in the USA, fantastic reels. Unfortunately they only make conventional non levelwind reels, great for trolling and bottom fishing, not so great for casting bass plugs.

I don’t know if Penn is still making anything here, I know some of their reels are made offshore these days. Their older International baitcasters were good reels and the old spinfishers were nearly indestructible.

I think Shimano is made in Japan. They make some great stuff, not the US but not China.

What TheKid said re Shimano. Japan, Malaysia, & a few other SE Asia countries. I've got my share of various Shimano reels. I might have missed something but nothing made in China that I see on the boxes and owners manuals so far.

I've used their service dept in Ca twice over the past 25 years and they were very good on answering questions and getting my reels back to me timely. I sent one of their spinning reels, not a cheap one, that I had dinged up pretty bad back for repairs and they replaced it with the same model. No charge and they paid the return freight.

I think the Penn internationals are the only ones made in the US.

ABU Ambassador level winds are made in Sweden period. I like them so much that I buy one every time there is a good deal on them damn smooth. mb

Yes, I have a few Shimano's that I like. I had a casting reel that lost a part but it was ~8 -10 years old and no parts available. I really like their trigger flip bail, but not enough people did apparently.

I'll have to look into Avet reels and I have one Ambassador. One thing occurred to me. All the bait casting reels seem to be made in the same factory. The reason I say this is I hadn't looked at them for a few years, but when I did the design had changed a bit and every manufactures looked identical.

I have heard from more than one place that there are only about 3 factories in China sharing tooling and building the low to mid level baitcasters you see in all the box stores. Don’t know if it’s true but sounds plausible to me.