This article originally ran in the Spring 2007 edition of American Angler and is reproduced here with permission.

ON A TRIP THROUGH Mississippi, I once saw an elderly man catching catfish using nothing but a coffee can as a "reel." Strange as it may have looked, his can accomplished a reel's simplest purpose: it held his line. And for many fly fishermen, this is almost all a reel does. On the other hand, saltwater anglers sometimes need serious stopping power, and many big-game reels look like a brake array on a racecar. Between the coffee can and the engineering marvel is a whole range of technology that many anglers understand only vaguely.