Top 10 Recommended Spinning Reels

3 types of reels

Spincast: This type of reel has a closed face. All the important parts are kept inside, under the nose cone. The line comes out of a little hole in the cover. You see a lot outfits designed for children sporting this type of reel, because it is the easiest to use. To use a spincast reel, you press the button on the back of the reel during your forward cast. The line peels out, and you let go of the button the line stops. Its very easy to get the hang of this reel, but you sacrifice some accuracy and distance.

Baitcasting: This is the probably the most difficult to master, because the spool turns when you cast. The spool must be kept under control so as not to turn into a nasty nest of line. It works great with heavier lines and lures, and is considered very accurate. But, because it can take a while to master casting with this type of real, they tend to be used only by experienced anglers.

Spinning: This is the most popular reel, it has an open faced design, it is easier to use than a baitcasting reel and more accurate than a spincast. It’s versatile. It has great line capacity (can put a good amount of line on it) and you can usually buy one with an extra spool, making it easy to change out your line while your on the water. Though it doesn’t perform as well when heavier line (20 pounds +) is required.

There is one more term you are going to run into around reels that you absolutely need to understand, and that is:

Drag: This is the mechanism that allows you to set how much resistance a fish feels when it pulls on the line. The tighter you set the drag, the more resistance the fish feels. You want to set the resistance tight enough that it tires out your fish, but not so tight that the line gets over stressed or breaks.

Reels

A reel is the mechanical device mounted to the handle end of the fishing rod onto which the line is wound.

They come in three types (further defined below), with more speeds and ball bearings than most sane people know about, much less worry about.
The most important point - when you turn the handle, it must feel "smooth." 
Price ranges from affordable to obscenely expensive.   

There's a wide variety of reels out there to choose from and there are quite a few manufacturers making them. They come in different sizes and shapes. Fishing wouldn't be very exciting if there weren't a wide variety of reels to fish with. You wouldn't want to reel in a Croaker with a 9/0 Penn big game reel, or try to catch a big "Smoker" Kingfish with a Zebco spin cast reel.

    There are 3 types of reels that most fishermen use to catch fish. They are:

 Spincast Reel
(Also known as a Closed Face reel)

Spinning Reel 
(Also known as a Open Face reel)

Bait Casting Reel

Even though each kind is different, all reels share some major components:

Spool
This part of the reel holds the line. The spool is visible on the both the spinning and baitcast reels. On the spincast models, it's located under the cover. Spools vary in size and in the amount of line they can hold. As you look at each reel, you'll see a listing like, 12/160 or 8/250. This tells you how much of a certain pound test line the spool can hold. In the 2 examples, the spool can hold either 160 yards of 12 lb test or 250 yards of 8 lb test line.

Bail
The bail has 2 settings, open or closed. It's the mechanism that either prevents or allows line coming off the spool.

An open bail allows line to come off the spool 

A closed bail- prevents the spool from letting line out. 

When casting your line, one of the things you do is open the bail. After the cast is completed, the bail is closed by turning the handle. Sometimes you'll hear the bail click after you've just turned the handle. This click is the bail closing and is normal.

Handle

The handle is what's used to retrieve (more commonly called crank) the line back onto the spool.

Drag
The object of drag is to allow the spool to slip before the line snaps. This slipping of the spool allows the fish more line and also prevents it from breaking. When fighting a fish, the rod does its job by absorbing the shock from the line. The rod and the drag work together to prevent the line from stretching and possibly breaking while fighting.

Here's an example: Small fish in open water - you can tighten down the drag and just crank the fish in with little worry the line may break. With a big fish in open water, you may want to lighten the drag to let the fish run and tire out. Therefore, with every fish you hook, you should be aware of the drag "setting" and the environment you hook them in.

Adjusting the drag is done in various ways depending on manufacturer and model. Listed below are some of the more common ways:

A number system 1-10,* 

An arrow pointing to the words less or more *

Located near the handle (called a star drag). *

* You'll want to look at the instructions for you're reel to determine how to operate the drag.

Drag is something you'll need to understand and know how to use.
Take some time and learn how to adjust the drag for your reel. Adjusting it will either make the fish fight harder or it will make it easier on him to pull line from the spool. We suggest playing with this setting so you'll get comfortable making the proper adjustment when the time comes. Keep in mind; it's something that may need to be changed several times a day depending on how the fish are fighting.

You may be wondering, "If setting the drag tires out the fish, why not just tighten it down all the way to begin with"? There are a couple of reasons why you don't want to do this:

It will increase the tension on the line causing it to possibly break

Adding too much pressure could cause the lure to be ripped from the fish's mouth during the fight.

Either way the fish is getting away from you. 

On the flip side, if it's set too loose:

The fish will run taking your line around stumps, rocks etc. until it breaks.

The fish could simply shake his head, and because of the slack on the line, the lure comes free.

The line must stay tight at all times. 

Drag is something you'll learn to use over time, and unfortunately, the lessons can be heartbreaking knowing that one got away because it wasn't properly set.

Ball Bearings
Without getting into too much detail, the number of ball bearings determines the smoothness of the reel. Simply put the more ball bearings the better.