Six months ago I decided to add a new spinning reel to my collection. I shopped online for about 2 days and after a tone of research I thought I would give a budget reel a chance to see how it would perform for me. I selected the Penn Pursuit II 4000.
Features
- 4 Shielded stainless ball bearings
- 13lbs of drag
- 12.9 oz weight
- Anodized aluminum spool
- Infinite Anti-Reverse
- Corrosion resistant graphite body
COST – $39.99
Review
The reel felt very well balanced for a budget reel. While the reel did feel a little cheaper than some of the more expensive Penn reels, its operation was rather smooth. The bail flipped with out much effort and never flipped unintentionally (a flaw with many budget reels). The infinite anti-reverse worked flawlessly, until it didn’t (more on that later).
The drag and retrieve never seemed to have any issues even fighting a few Redfish that where over 30″. When the large fish went on runs the drag was smooth and the gears never felt loose or gave any impression that they would fail. The graphite and aluminium construction held up well to the largest fish that I caught on this reel.
All seemed great until on a trip to Mosquito Lagoon I hooked into an average size Redfish. When I took my hand off the reel to land the fish the anti-reverse failed and started to wind in reverse allowing the fish some slack and a chance to come off the hook. For most of the remainder of the day that anti-reverse was intermittent and seemed to completely stopped working at the end of the day.
When I got home I opened the reel up to inspect it and figure out what happened. The reel is equipped with an anti-reverse one-way bearing that was heavily rusted. This bearing was beyond repair.
The Penn Pursuit II got the same level of care as all my other reels that have very little to no corrosion on them. All my other reels are rated for saltwater use, but it seems the pursuit is not!
Conclusion
This reel seems like it would be a very solid reel that would last a long time for an angler that would use this reel in freshwater only. Anybody who spends any amount of time on saltwater would most likely run into the same problem that I experience and as such I could not recommend this reel unless are very rough on gear and tend to replace reels often anyway!
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