The Berkley line or reel spooling station is a somewhat useful device for the price. The set up of the spool station was not too difficult, and the instructions are permanently attached to the bottom of the station, a good idea. It helps if you attach the station to a table or bench with a c-clamp to hold it down.
If you look at the picture closely you will see that a baitcasting or a closed face reel sits in the same position it sits on a reel as a top mounted reel. It really works great for this kind of reel. But I found out that my bottom mounting open-faced spinning reel has to mount UPSIDE DOWN since it sits on top of the station. This forces you to reel in the opposite direction you are used to in order to put line on the spool, or you can hold the entire spooling station upside down which means you can't clamp it. Neither of these solutions is comfortable. In my case I have several vintage Mitchell 300 reels worth the large spools, and they take a long time to load this way. This is something the manufacturer probably should have thought of in the design and added a reversible L-shaped arm that raises & lowers to accommodate both top mounting and bottom mounting reels. Fly Fishing reels are affected the same way as they are a bottom mounting reel. If they update the design, they should address this issue first and a lot of people pointed this out in their reviews of this product on the Cabela's site.
There is a little bit of a learning curve in setting it up and getting it adjusted right. You have to fiddle with the tension quite a bit on the spool in order to get it to work correctly without any line slack, but also not letting it get too tight. Any slip in tension allows to line to tangle around the arm. As for durability, the plastic on the station is very thin, and easily cracked and in fact on my first use the reel mount cracked, but to its credit mine still works even with the crack. There is a hole on the bottom to hang the station on a hook or nail.
There is a great line stripper included, it can be removed from the station, takes two c cell batteries (not included). It removed an entire spool of old line from a reel in seconds. You can buy it separately by the way here at Amazon without buying the whole spooling station too. In retrospect, I would probably buy the stripper separately and try something else for spooling new fishing line. I do like Berkley fishing line and trust the name, and that is why I bought it. If you decide to buy one, shop around to get the best price as there are other pages at Amazon selling the same station under different names with different pics. Then combine price plus each sellers individual shipping fee to get the best deal. Just look for the search term "Berkley Station" and that should bring them all up. Hope this helps. Berkley Portable Line Spooling Station
Well, this was not the line spooler in the picture but the portable line spooler. I have already spooled 3 reels, 2 conventional Penns and 1 Shakespeare spinning reel. I've had no problems at all. The spinning reel was a little hard to get used to turning backwards to load line but after maybe 50 - 60 feet of line it was no problem. This is great if you have multiple reels and change line every year. The included line stripper works great. Over all, this was a great buy.
This looks like fun. This is a gift for someone and I think it will make a fisherman's life much easier. No more tangled lines. No more hours of spooling a line the old-fashioned way. And it fits in any compartment on the boat.
This thing works great. I have been spooling line from line spools directly onto my reels while mounted on the rods. There was no real good way to keep tension on the line while spooling this way, so the line was usually a bit too loose on the reel.
This little gem solved that problem - perfectly.
It even includes a "power stripper" to strip the old line off the reel first.
This is a good idea, but it broke the first time I used it. The little threaded insert that holds the set screw for the tensioners stripped right away. Without the tensioners, you might as well just load line straight off the spool.
I purchased the Berkley Portable Line Spooling Station for use in spooling two new reels. The concept is great but the design is grossly lacking quality and functionality for what is advertised. The spool mounting is just not sturdy enough to provide what is advertised and will not sustain.
I suggest that the current design be sent back to production. - Berkley - Fishing'
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