Single action fly fishing reel having an infinitely variable silent drag

Abstract

In a fly reel, drag is provided by use a helically wound wire spring mounted coaxially over a fixed post attached to the reel frame. The turns at one end of the helically wound spring loosely contact the fixed post, while at the other end of the spring the turns are in intimate contact with the post. One end of the spring is free and the other end is fixed to a spool axially straddling the spring-post combination. The spool contains a drag adjustment knob whose initial setting determines the angular travel of the spool until a pin on the knob contacts the free end of the spring. As line is stripped from the spool, the spool rotates and the loose turns incrementally tighten about the fixed post. This generates a torque on the spool causing drag on the line, the torque linearly increasing with spool rotation until the spool advances to where the pin on the adjustment knob engages the free end of the spring wire, forcing the spring turns to relax about the post so as to maintain the torque value that existed when the pin first contacted the wire's free end. In the direction of opposite rotation of the spool, the spool applies a force to the spring decoupling the spring coils from the post, and no drag torque is generated to oppose the turning of the crank for this direction of reel rotation. The drag adjustment is infinitely variable, and the drag is silently generated.