Spooling mono or braided fishing line using your Carbon rod

Traditionally with fiberglass or composite fishing rods it has generally been safe to spool new line onto your reel running the line through all or at least some of your guide rings.

However, with today’s modern Carbon fishing rods we strongly advise against such practice, because, depending on how you are spooling line onto the reel particularly if you apply pressure by hand on the line or if you have another person holding the line when you spool in or anything similar, it is possible you could apply too much pressure, bent and then accidentally break your rod. You also run the risk of applying too much force and at the same time accidentally sticking your rod too high up when spooling in.

Especially since the majority of carbon rods are either fast or medium action (only the upper 1/3 rd. of the blank bents or maximum 2/3, not all).

In our opinion is just too risky and any misstep or mishandling of rod/reel/line alignment and force applied can have dire consequences.

We hear of too many people breaking Carbon rods whilst spooling line onto a reel usually with the breakage occurring towards the top of the rod within vicinity of the first 3-5 rod guide rings. This is accidental breakage which is usually not a warranty issue. In general, rod breakage is very rarely a result of a manufacturing fault or design flaw with probably something like 0.05-0.5% of rods being an actual fault. 99.5% of the time rod breakages occur due to angler misuse, abuse or accidental error.

Therefore, in order to avoid breaking your Carbon fishing rod we strongly recommend spooling your new line onto your fishing reel using only the bottom 1-2 guide rings from your rod. Or if you have a 2-piece fishing rod, the guides on the bottom section of the rod, close to your reel seat. Or your use an old fiberglass rod if you really want to insist on spooling the line on your reel using all the runners on the fishing rod, as the fiberglass can handle much more punishment than carbon; then, when you are finished, just take the reel off and place it on your intended Carbon rod.

No matter how long you have been fishing for, how many reels you have spooled up in your life time or how much of an expert you think you are accidents can happen especially with Carbon fishing rods therefore we recommend spooling line onto your reel in the manners advised to avoid breakage of your expensive Carbon fishing rod.