I would pair a vintage Mitchell 308/408/410 with that sweet little rod. There are plenty of barely used ones on eBay. They also have lots of other great vintage ultralight reels on eBay, such as Shakespeare 2052, Penn 716, Quick 110, Alcedo Micron, and Orvis 50. If you want a more modern skirted spool reel, someone else will have to help, since I despise them on principle/looks, lol.

Mitchell 410 is the same frame size as Mitchell 300


If you want a Mitchell ultralight, make sure it's the 408.

If you want tiny, Alcedo Micron


If you want smooth, Penn 716

Penn 420Z or 420/4200SS (a 420SS just listed on ebay)
the thing not to despise about SS is your line won't find its way underneath the spool

If you want unbelievable, Hardy Altex Mk IV or V No. 1
this is a No. 2


If you want modern, Tica Cetus SS500

Modern, but not too modern, just like that rod - the smallest sized Diawa Tournament SS 700. Solid spinning reel!

I do like the looks of the Orvis 50. Interestingly it’s the same thing as Pelican 50. Which might be had much cheaper + $25 shipping from Netherlands. A problem for me is all reels if that era seem to be left hand wind only. I’m very used to right hand wind. I may try for a Pelican for display purposes. My druthers {at the moment} is Shimano Soare C14+500s, 4.9 oz. 115m 2#, $300. Truly a reel intended for my rod. I paid $99 for the rod and haven’t even seen it yet. If the rod is a magic wand I might just buy one. Or start a go fund me. I have owned 3 Bogdan reels $$$$. But $300 for a creek spinning reel! Most of my fly fly fishing is done with Berkley glass. None of which I paid more then $60 for. I have Winston’s holding down my closet.

I’ll look for the 51. With me I started wandering into fly shops in latter 1960’s. At that time all right handlers had to fly cast with the right hand and switch to right wind to reel. Being left handed that suited me to a T cast left wind right no switching.

viewtopic.php?f=26&t=66076&view=unread#unread
doesn't quite count as tiny, but fits a great niche - it's definitely the same size as Mitchell '08, and a better reel in every way.

they really don't make dogs in spinning reels anymore.
The Tica is the perfect example - nasty pedigree with not great fly reels and mediocre baitcasters - but they do make most of the other-badged reels out there. Computer-designed and balanced, the modern spinning reel is pretty much perfect at any level - what you buy with upgrades are improved castings, and more and ceramic ball bearings.
This salt Tica Libra is the best buy out there.

Bulldog, Doug you are getting to the type of knowledge I lack re: spinning reels. There are so many reels and so little info about them. My fly reels I have now are all in the ‘fighting well above their weight / price’. Hard to determine category for spinning reels. But the Soare 1.1 oz lighter then my $16 reel is only $284 more. And worth it?

Copolymer is the way to go in XUL lines, though some people use fluoro tippet, and Seaguar fluoro just about counts as copolymer.
The idea being an abrasion-resistant surface and a tougher core.
The pink/gold line you see on my XUL Tica above is Kamikaze 3-lb copolymer ordered from Australia, and the best copolymer I've ever used.
And be careful buying copolymer, there are a lot of bad ones out there (Berkley).
Tried the 10-lb Berkley copolymer for 4200SS - my daughter was catching Sheepshead at the coast, and the line stretched so bad it slid inside its wraps and locked up her reel. We were done for the day, anyway, but had to replace the line after one trip.

It's too easy to twist line on a spinning reel - the worst way is winding against drag. It's bad enough with mono, but twist with braid turns itself into long rope-like knots that you can only deal with by cutting out.

Except my XUL, for my inshore reels, I buy Seaguar Red Label 12-lb on a bulk spool.

Here's a Daiwa sweetfire 1000 2b
Rated for 1lb,, 2lb,,and 4lb line
Reel weighs 6.5oz filled with 4 lb stren.
super smooth and has a great smooth drag.
This one came in a Daiwa travel outfit with a
4. 1/2 foot fiberglass rod.
Nice ree
Price about 20 bucks for reel.

I have an e-friend on Corpusfishing who takes his UL and XUL spinning reels after big inshore fish - day after day when he gets home from work.
He lives on the water, with a boat in a slip, and fishes this little tackle hard...
He reported wade-fishing results in July with a limit of schoolie seatrout (17/18") plus a slot redfish (21") - these are pretty substantial fish for such diminutive tackle, and excellent results for anybody's fishing day.
He filled this stringer while his pot of chili was cooking on the stove.

He bought a Tica Cetus SS500 at my recommendation, fishes it with his 4-lb line, and has a Shimano Sedona 500 he fishes with his 6-lb line (you can match the same capacity with the Cetus SS800). He's been delighted with both reels, and you can't argue with the results. Unfortunately, when I searched the corpusfishing archive this morning, his Tinypic files are gone.

It's like I said above, you can't go wrong with modern spinning reels - there just aren't any dogs. Somebody insisting on one specific brand and model has been impressed with the new reels over the old, but I doubt if you can fish through enough reels in a lifetime to adamantly recommend one over another.
On one TKF offshore spinning reel thread, one guy recommended buy the reels you can find with the fewest ball bearings, because they cost less when you want to rebuild them. Others reported at current prices, just replacing reels made more sense than rebuilding them.

What you really measure in reel prices and reel life is how you abuse them.
If you're doing this right, your drag is the only part that wears, and everybody is using the same carbon drags these days.
If you don't rinse your reels, or keep them lubed, higher-grade materials are going to keep their tight tolerances a little longer.
If you dip your reels in saltwater, or lay them down in the sand, and want to ignore them when you get home, then you should be buying the $600+ totally sealed super reels.

Last trip to Lighthouse Lakes, wading the marker 60 pass, Stevo was fishing a 10' spinning rod ($1000 IRT rod and reel), and my 7' Cabela's Salt Striker rod + Lew's inshore baitcaster was out-casting him. I'm happy for Steve that he can buy this nice tackle, and he was due - in the active quiver he still had a Penn 4400SS (with less use/abuse than my old one) and a low-grade baitcaster, also over 30 years old.

(I've embarrassed guides with my baitcaster ability to out-cast them. Two, specifically, were trying to tell me what was wrong with my cast, teach me the right way, and one of those guys, I doubled his free-shrimp cast. In all fairness, they couldn't understand how I was loading the rod, because just for light stuff, I was doing it differently than they do - I make a big spiral with the light bait starting in front of me, gradually feeding with my thumb as I'm going overhead, and smoothly accelerating the rod, until I get to the release - the centrifugal acceleration on the bait increases the effective rod length and totally eliminates jerk from hooked shrimp - so I could get a lot more velocity on the shrimp than they could - 20% more to double their cast.
Never get in a casting contest with an engineer who's done the math - in the surf with a basket, I've consistently shot my Sage RPLX7 to 140' - every cast)

I have all kinds of rigs I cast for fun.
A 7-1/2' Stephenson cane spinning rod with small agate guides that I Wallace-cast an Allcocks Easicast - what the Brits call a spinning reel, but it's an under-rod baitcasting reel.
This rig will cast 3/8 oz as well as any baitcaster - 150' easy.


I have a couple of Centrepins, but they're really for trotting (steelheading).
between them, the one I like is a 4" Speedia - it has a much better bushing than the more famous Adcock Stanton.
I even have a coarse-fishing trotting rod, which I haven't fished, but have used the Speedia on a fly rod to drift nymphs long distance into big water that wasn't wadable.