As soon as you see the Vivarelli fly reel, you can tell it's a little different. It's the lever obviously. Worlds have been moved with such things. While this lever couldn't quite manage that, a pull quickly sends the spool whirling. Then, if they haven't already crossed your mind, you ask yourself two things. What makes it go? And is that lever going to get in the way?

Having both the aluminum and graphite versions in my hands, I wanted to figure out what makes them go. Both versions are identical except in material, a few minor cosmetic changes and a nice leather case for the aluminum version. The spool, shrouded and protected within the body, is removable and releases easily. The 'removable spool' feature, typically taken for granted, isn't as common within the automatic spool world. The lever lies directly below the grip inline with the slim foot with the spool set off to the left side (there's no left vs. right setup, no handle at all). The line feeds out between two rollers in the bottom of the solidly framed body.

After removing the spool, a simple set of gears nestled along the back of the body becomes apparent. The lever with a row of teeth spins the primary one-way gear at the base of the spindle. This rolls a secondary gear, steps up the rotation and feeds back to a gear at the base of the spool. One pull of the lever equates to about 3 revolutions, and it will keep spinning if it has enough momentum. This momentum can rip your fly right into your tiptop if you're not careful. In a speed test, it can pull in 90' of line in less than 15 seconds, which is an age faster than a 'standard' direct drive reel and pretty amazing. Unfortunately laying the line evenly down across the spool is near impossible at this speed and usually results in the line bound up under the shroud. In the reel's defense, this isn't a very common scenario. During hit and run stream fishing the reel shines. After covering the water, you can retrieve your line and be moving up in seconds. When playing a fish, you can pick the line up from around your feet without thinking. This is the key strength of the semi automatic. I found the design clean and elegant.

What's not easily apparent is that the clutch that allows line to be stripped off (a ball and spring mechanism, 'drag' if you can call it that) is within the spool itself. This clutch is adjustable with a small hex wrench. I left this at the factory setting and found it light enough to protect 3-4 pound tippet. Even so if you've gotten the line tight to the reel, you almost feel like helping the fish make its run. After some time, I preferred leaving some slack and playing the fish by hand. You can't palm the rim, so I never became confident in leaving line tight.

After getting over initial awkwardness, operation becomes second nature. In fact after getting accustomed to the Vivarelli, going back to standard reels feels awkward and honestly a little tedious. The lever doesn't really get in the way any more than a handle and awareness of it quickly fades.

Had this been my entire experience, I'd be rather happy with them especially for light line weights where the drag isn't crucial. Unfortunately, I experienced a couple manufacturing defects. These left me a bit soured.

The first was a problem out of the box with the primary gear that holds the one-way catch. The catch is mounted in a hole near the outer edge. I believe that the operation used to manufacture this hole also slightly distorted the gear teeth just outward from this location. If the gears came to rest in exactly the wrong position (when this position is inline with the secondary), they would bind and lock on the next rotation attempt. This was easily noticeable if you turned the secondary gear slowly by hand. Both reels I received had the same defect, and probably had a primary gear from the same manufacturing batch. Luckily, after a several uses this problem went away as the teeth wore in.

The second problem was the screws holding the aluminum version's foot coming loose. After only a few uses I noted looseness in the foot mounting. Of course as I removed the reel to inspect it, one of the screws fell into the dirt to be lost forever. A tiny drop of removable threadlock would be cheap and have completely prevented this.

The last problem was more serious, again on the aluminum version. As I stripped off line, the pin holding a line roller came loose and both pieces dropped into the river. This was the roller on the important side (up the rod), and without it the line drags across an aluminum edge. There are so many ways this could have been prevented I don't want to talk about it, but all of them would cost at least 5 more cents than the cheap splined pin that is present in the current design. As I write this, I just pressed the other pin out with the corner of my fingernail. At least I can move it to the important side now.

If Vivarelli can get over this sort of manufacturing (and they may have already addressed these issues, I haven't talked to them), then I think they would have a nice reel in light line weights. The graphite is light but sturdy, and it certainly picks up line in a hurry.

Specs:
Franco Vivarelli Semi Automatic Fly Reel
Capacity: WF6F
Weight - Carbon Fiber: 103g (3.6oz)
Weight - Aluminum: 150g (5.3oz)

Eric is a mechanical designer and gizmo nut.
Oct '06