Wally Marshall Tightline Special Reel Review

Back in the Spring, before the water warmed up and the Crappie started thinking about spawning, I bought several of the Wally Marshall Tightline Special Crappie Reels from Bass Pro to review and to see how they would perform on my Spider Rigging rods. These fishing reels remind me of a miniature Diawa Millionaire or Abu Garcia Ambassadeur reel.

I set out in early March to Lake Eufaula to try some early season Spider Rigging. I was targeting suspended and scattered crappie, so spider rigging was the only way to go. I put four of the Wally Marshall Tightline Special Reels on four of the Wally Marshall Tightline Special rods that I also bought from Bass Pro. I love these rods, but that's another review!

I spooled each reel with 10 pound Viscious Hi-Vis line. I like this line because it seems to have some backbone to it and I can horse a fish over the side when I need to.

I had learned how to Spider Rig from a Crappie guide on lake Eufaula. He showed me the ins and outs, as well as the little details that can make or break your day fishing. It was money well spent!

I started the day off fishing the channel and ledge breaks in about 15 to 20 foot of water. I adjusted my rods so the jigs would be at different depths. I did this so I could locate the Crappie. Once I found what depth they wanted, I would then set all my jigs to that depth.

The day started off good. I was into the first fish about 10 minutes after I put the lines in the water. This is the way it went pretty much all day. I ended the day with 19 keeper Crappie.

The Wally Marshall Tightline Special crappie reels held up beautiful. I continued to use them on my Spider Rigging rods and they had no problem performing.

Well, that is with the exception of one reel. I was fishing a local river, again spider rigging for Crappie, when my rod bent double. You could say that I knew it wasn't a Crappie and I had a pretty good idea what it was. I fought this fish for about 10 minutes before I got him to the boat. He made several hard runs trying to get down to the bottom, but the Wally Marshall reel and 10lb Vicious line whooped him pretty good. I was finally able to steer this 10lb Blue catfish to my little dip net. The Wally Marshall reel seemed harder to reel afterwards, so I sent it back and BPS replaced it. Needless to say, these little reels are not meant to fight big fish, but if they have to, at least the one I had did the job!