by John Thompson

This is one of the best spinning reels you will be able to find for under $100. Expect the same smoothness and and quality from this reel that you would expect from any other reel made by Abu Garcia. It is tough to beat this company.

ALB stands for Aluminum Body. Made from Aluminum, this reel is very light, hardly noticeable after a long day on the water. It weighs about 9 and 1/2 ounces. Unlike most “lightweight” things, this reel is strong and durable. I am a bass tournament fisherman. I mostly use baitcasting reels for Spinnerbaits and crankbaits but for light lures and lures that need a little more finesse, I use spinning reels. Baitcasters are very tough to use on windy days. A strong gust of wind can cause a backlash in a baitcaster that resembles a rats nest. It is next to impossible to get a rats nest in a spinning reel. They are very simple to use.

Ball Bearings: Just about anything manufactured that goes round and round has ball bearings. Your vehicle has wheel bearings, a drive shaft has bearings. It’s pretty simple with fishing reels, “The more bearings it has, the better it’s going to be”. Also runs true is, “The more bearings it has, the more its going to cost”. I wouldn’t use or own a spinning reel with less than 6 ball bearings. This one has 10. You can tell the smoothness and quality of this reel with it’s 10 ball bearings without even taking it out on the water. Just take it out of the box and give it a spin a couple of times and let the handle go. If it keeps on spinning very smoothly like this one does then it is a quality reel. How many times it spins is also indicative of quality. Count the turns, any less then 15 rotations, then don’t buy it.

Instant Anti-Reverse: This feature is great and comes standard on just about every quality fishing reel including this one. When I was younger, the first reels I used didn’t have this feature. The reel had one or two internal stopping points that would stop the reel after it went back far enough. Line would loosen from the spool and cause twists. In order to set the hook on a fish you would have to reach this stopping point to apply pressure to the hook point. But with instant anti-reverse, when you stop going forward with the reel or take your hand off of it, the spool and reel will not turn backwards, it stops! This allows the fisherman to make one handed hook sets and very quick hook sets.

The Gear Ratio of this Reel is 5.1 to 1. This means that for every rotation you make with the handle, the spool will make 5.1 rotations. Without these gears you might as well just wind up the line around a stick. The higher the gear ratio, the faster that fish or lure is coming back to you, and the easier it is to reel both of them.

Abu Garcia makes three different Cardinal 500ALB series reels. The 503 model is the biggest, weighing in at 9.9 oz. It will hold 180 yards of 8 lb test line. The 502 model is the mid-sized reel, weighing 9.7 ounces and able to hold 175 yards of 6lb test line. The 501 model is the smallest weighing in at 7.6 oz and able to hold 110 yards of 6 lb test line. I use the 503 series for my bass fishing. When I use 10 lb test I think I can get about 175 yards of line on the spool, about 50 of which I ever use. My 501 series I use for trout fishing with 6lb test. It is a very small reel. Every model in this series has 10 bearings and a 5.1 to 1 ratio. Abu Garcia gives the purchaser an extra spool with the reel which is nice because you can put two different size lines on a spool and change accordingly without having to strip a spool.

Very nice reel for the money!

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