When I got my first President 20X years ago, I was blown away by how smooth it was. I could feel every little tap on my line because I felt nothing from the reel. I was so impressed that I bought a whole bunch of them and set up all of the spinning rods for my family with them and even had some spares. Life was good. Then everything changed suddenly . . . while unhooking a fish, the rod slipped from my hands and plunked into the river. No big deal, surely that won't phase a good quality fishing reel, right? WRONG. My reel instantly went from buttery smooth to a very stiff retrieve. It became difficult to even retrieve line, let alone feel a fish hit the lure. The reel was essentially useless. I dried it out, tried to clean it, lube it, everything I could think of, but it was no use. My reel appeared to be ruined. This was not dirty water. It's very, very clear.

I chalked it up to bad luck and a possible fluke, put on a spare reel and went back to catching fish. Unfortunately, one by one, all my other reels are following the same pattern. One dunk in the river, which is pretty inevitable if you fish in a bouldery stream, and the thing tends to get stiffer than a dead animal on the side of the road. Rain also seems to do the trick. Add in some colder weather and you might as well give up. I think I own 9 or 10 of these things and only have 3 or 4 that can still be used at this point. To make matters potentially worse, I also bought 6 of the President XT…

I bought two 25 presidents about five years ago. Loved them, bragged to anyone who would listen about how great they were.

Two weeks ago I set the hook on a 12” smallmouth and the shaft broke just below the reel foot.

I blew it off as a fluke, maybe I bumped or banged it causing a crack, yada yada.

Today when I set the hook on another smallie with my backup reel, it broke in exactly the same place as the first one did.

Lesson learned, I will never own another graphite frame reel.