Redington ACE Reel Review - The Best Fly Reel for the Money
Check out the New ACE reels here!
Redington's new ACE fly reels are pretty awesome, I have to be honest. They replace the popular Redington Rise series and range from 3/4 to 9/10 in size options. Really interesting geometric design here for lightness and structural durability. Smart features like a slight lip added to the drag knob housing to prevent backing or anything getting trapped in there. Fully CNC machined aluminum frame and spool. *Note: Most inexpensive reels have maybe the frame machined and the spool molded or cast aluminum, or even the whole reel made of cast aluminum because it is cheaper, but not this one. Redington really made sure this was properly made and it shows. I will be putting this new reel into lots of rod & reel combos for our shop very soon, starting with the Sage MAVERICK Combos and also the Sage SONIC series for freshwater.
I mainly review very expensive fly fishing gear, and that's also what I own and use. That's not to brag, it's just for context and to qualify my opinions. I'm usually skeptical of any gear in this price range but these new ACE reels might change my mind. They are actually very good for something that starts under $250 for the 3/4 and 5/6 - and is only $20 more for the 7/8 and the 9/10 sizes. For that you get a FULLY MACHINED ALUMINUM REEL WITH A CARBON FIBER DRAG SYSTEM... Insanity. You can read the rest of the specs on the product pages if you want but that's the key takeaway here. These reels have a very good amount of drag, more than some reels that cost 3-4 times as much... Yes, really. As The tech specs are listed in the product pages, the point here is not to focus on "Oh this reel has 3 more pounds of drag than that reel so it must be better" but it's nice to know these reels are well into the range of the much more expensive reels' drag systems.
Sorry for the phone picture but I wanted to quickly compare these new reels to my existing roster of best-selling Sage reels... See the family resemblance? You can tell that both brands are owned by the same parent company. This is a very good thing, in terms of the technology and quality of designs from Sage trickling down to Redington. The one in the middle of the photo is the new Redington ACE. All the rest are Sage reels, from left to right: Sage Spectrum, Sage Spectrum LT (Lighter weight than regular Spectrum reel), the ACE, the Sage Arbor XL (believe it or not that's actually only the 4/5/6 size next to all these 7/8 reels because I didn't have the 6/7/8 Arbor XL handy today). And then, the big kahuna, the Sage ENFORCER. It may resemble the others slightly but it is an absolute beast in hand, and it's very obvious when you pick it up and turn it a bit. The other four reels have more in common.
My top sellers on the high end are Hatch Iconics, Shilton reels, the Sage Enforcer and Spectrum LT reels (both very good for the price point also), Abel SDS, and the Ross Evo R Salt - a phenomenally good reel with DNA straight from Abel. I sell hundreds of these and other saltwater fly reels, plus a fair number of freshwater reels as well. I am also the guy taking them apart, switching the retrieve for people, and usually also spooling them up with line and backing too. So I literally know these high-quality reels inside and out.
Redington's new ACE fly reels are pretty awesome, I have to be honest. This is coming from a guy who fishes the very best high-end reels on the market.
You may have seen the many great rod & reel combos on our website. Well guess what, these new Redington ACE reels are going right into some brand new combos. For a long time, I have been looking for a way to keep the price of combos reasonable without compromising on quality, which I will never do. Normally I am just not satisfied with anything much below $400 but these new reels are actually very nice. So I put my money where my mouth is, I just ordered a bunch of them from Redington. Mainly I think these will be popular in silver - or "Silver Dollar" as Redington calls it - but there are two more color options. Black is called "Night Rider" - someone call David Hasslehoff. There is also what Redington is calling "Tobacco" which is a reddish-brown color that looks nice.
Check out the New ACE reels here!
