![]() ![]() At only 14 ounces, it’s easy to hold in your hands all day long with a minimum of fatigue. Right from the get-go, even an untrained eye will realize that this is no ordinary downsized jigging reel, but a high-end piece of well-constructed machinery. My sample featured a black body with a gold spool and trim, and had striking good looks. I requested the micro-sized 25H model in whatever color was available from their kaleidoscope of options and it showed up a few weeks ago. Its predecessors had brought a lot of stripers, deepwater sea bass and tog, summer flounder, cod, pollock and football tuna to boatside for me and my charter customers and I was well aware of the positives and the occasional negatives of the Maxel product line. I currently use the Hybrid star drag and the Ocean Max lever drag reels, so I was anxious to get my hands on a sample of the newest Rage to see how it measured up to its siblings. The Rage jigging reel models represent the top of the line for Maxel. The heavier Maxel Rage 60H, 90N and 90 are meant to handle larger near offshore and deepwater gamefish, but are still relatively light weight with run-stopping drag capability. The smaller 25H right and left hand models are a huge hit with the “slow pitch” jigging crowd looking for a powerful micro-sized outfit. These reels grabbed a lot of attention for their smooth gears and drags, combined with a tough as nails construction and do-it-all attitude. You get what you pay for.Introduced last summer at the 2018 ICAST tackle show, Bimini Bay Outfitters made a big splash with the USA debut of their proven high-end Maxel Rage lever drag reels. All of these Chinese factories are trying to go around that model cutting out any real support for the product. This includes a retail distribution network that also has to make a profit selling the reels, a real customer service department and real parts support. Good companies with a long term view are all trying to bring to market the most competitively priced and reliable reels that they can given their distribution model. Taking a "flier" on one of these reels should be considered a potentially "throw away" by someone with reel money to burn, not by someone on a budget.as when that body screw strips, a pressed in AR fails or drag is sticking from poor quality control on a drag plate and shoddy machining you more than likely just bought either a time consuming reclamation project for the accomplished "DIYer" with access to a machine shop or, a paper weight. Not a "fly by night" importer that is looking to make a quick killing or a factory looking to unload some over runs. The best "value" you can possibly get in a reel is one that is stood behind by an established name brand with something at stake and a warranty that means something. Identical schematics do not mean identical materials nor perfected tolerances etc etc etc. Shorter handles usually mean inferior gears, reports by self-interested importers are not to be trusted. Just do your "due diligence" and red flags should crop up all over the place. Once you have it you want to "lego" of it.Īnyone that gets involved in buying "off brand" reels should take a hint and a big "buyer beware!". This is about as close as you can get to a "lego" reel. We heard that there are companies in China that just make parts and anyone who wants to go into the reel business buys the parts and then starts producing reels. We have seen almost all of the Chinese reels with many different names on the same reel. Most people do not want to buy a reel under these circumstances no matter that they are only a fraction of their normal selling price. The only way they sell them is as is w/o warranty, cash only, no return. The company feels that they cannot warranty them because there are no parts. The company has over 200 of the maxel reels on a shelf trying to find some way of recouping some of their investment. The company sold some reels but wound up buying them all back for some complaint or another by the customer. The reels look good but the old saying that all that glitters is not gold would be appropriate. There were many frequent changes to the line and it was impossible to ever get a workable parts list or an orderly timetable for receiving the reels, or parts. ![]() My company started to import and sell the Maxel reels. ![]()
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