Here's the best salmon reel I've ever used as a professional fly fishing guide. This silver Van Staal C-Vex Combo fly reel has been my own personal salmon fly reel since 2003. The C-Vec 9/11 Combo comes with 2 spools (1 x 9/10 & 1 x 10/11) that fit the same reel housing which is a clever design and eliminates the need to carry 2 reels.

This perfect Spring salmon was caught by myself on the River Tay during late February after hours of searching the river for a fish. When you go salmon fishing it requires a solid logic backed fishing plan at the start of the day to catch salmon and this fish was the result of that type of detailed planning. Look at the perfect shimmer from this early Spring salmon's silver flanks lying beside my salmon fly reel & Spey rod.

This black Van Staal C-Vex Combo 9/11 is a perfect salmon reel that comes with 2 spools of differing sizes. The main reel and the spare spool come in protective neoprene cases which you can see here. These are great professional salmon fishing guide reels if buying quality is important to you and you want a reel that will last a lifetime. These black neoprene reel pouches keep the reel & spare spool in perfect condition.

Here's my own trusted silver friend of 20 years. This is a Van Staal C-vex 9-11 salmon fly reel with the 9/10 spool fitted paired up with the brilliant Monteith 9/10 Speycaster Multi System fly line. These 2 items fished of my bespoke built Bruce & Walker 16ft 9/10 Spey rod is Spey casting perfection and that's my firm professional opinion. As a professional Scottish salmon fishing guide you need to have quality salmon fishing equipment like this fly reel.

This was a perfect River Tummel salmon of 11lbs caught that I caught while working as a salmon guide in May near the mouth of the River Tummel. You can see the light blue floating fly line on my fly rod which was fitted with a 15ft sinking tip just to get the fly down a foot or two in the water column. Note the fine meshed landing net bag the salmon is lying on.

I was fortunate to get the opportunity to buy a dozen of these super fly reels 15 years ago before Van Staal moved their production from the USA to China. I distributed the reels I bought to long standing salmon fishing guide colleagues and kept my own personal silver version which I still use to this day and have owned since 2003. This reel comes with a 9/10 & a 10/11 spool which fits into the same reel housing which is a great design concept.

Here's a glimpse of the salmon fly patterns I have absolute faith in. Although I'll always experiment with different fly patterns my main 2 are the 'Copperass' & the 'Jock's Shrimp' patterns which account for 85% of the salmon I'm involved in the capture of each year. The Maxima spools you see is my favourite salmon fly leader material.

Here's great friend and professional salmon fly tyer Danny McLaughlin with myself after meeting up near Glasgow to discuss salmon fly tying and future orders for visiting salmon fishers.

Spinning And Fly Reel Tips

By Jock Monteith 20th April 2026

For anyones who's reasonably new to this business here's a few tips to make the spooling up of either your fly line or spinning line easy to get right without guesswork or line twist issues.

Spooling Up Your Fly Reel

When you buy a new fly reel it's going to require just the right amount of fly line backing to allow enough sufficient space to then add the fly line without overfilling or under filling the reel's line capacity. This can be made even more tricky when you have a sensibly thought out reel design like the Van Staal C-Vex 9/12 in the above pictures which comes with 2 different capacity fly reel spools.

This beautiful salmon fly reel id the Van Staal C-Vex Combo 9/11 in silver which is my own personal salmon reel. The light blue fly line is the Monteith Speycaster Multi System which was a Spey line I designed that fishes with 1 of 8 tips that come with the mainline to cover various different salmon fly depth swim applications. The fly rod is a 16ft Bruce & Walker Norway blank hand built to my specification with a stabilised walnut Struble reel seat.

How To Perfectly Measure Fly Line Reel Capacity

Rather than just fitting some backing and then adding your fly line and hope you get it exactly correct there's an easy logical way to do this. Firstly wind your fly line to the reel with the thin running line loosely attached to the reel first. In this instance the fly line should be wound off its temp plastic spool with a colleague holding a pencil though the middle of the spool to avoid line twist. Then connect the backing with a loose non permanent knot and keep winding (pencil in backing line spool to avoid line twist) until you've got just the right amount of backing on your fly reel. Cut the backing at that point and take the entire line (backing & fly line) off the reel and reverse it with the proper permanent knots where required and the fly line round the correct way.

The Perfect Salmon Fly Line Reel Fit

This will ensure the perfect fit is achieved to take advantage of your fly reels intended line capacity without over filling or under filling your fly reel. It's a little bit of hassle but for me personally it was always 'essential' hassle to get this measure absolutely bang on perfect. All fly lines should be connected to the backing on the reel with a simple 'loop to loop' connection for easy of fly line change. Even taking a lighter briefly to the cut end of a braided loop knot gives it a professional sealed finish not that it matters much to a salmon!

This salmon spinning reel was manufactured by Shimano and is known as a Stradic 5000. The fishing line on the spool is Maxima Chameleon in 18lbs breaking strain. I always add a few extra turns of line to the spool like you can see here just to add a bit of extra distance to each cast when working on a big wide river like the River Tay as a salmon fishing guide.

How To Spool Up A Spinning Reel Properly

When I was a very young lad I could never fully understand where all the line twist came from when spooling up my spinning reels. It took an experienced ghillie on the Tay to point out where I was going wrong. If you're fitting new monofilament to a fixed spool reel the monofilament has to comes of the plastic spool and onto your spinning reel without twisting and the line memory intact. Most people put a pencil through the middle of the plastic monofilament spool but that is only effective when spooling up a multiplier or fly reel and if you do that with a fixed spool reel (as I used to do) you will generate line twist.

The Plastic Spool Label Up Method

The correct way to spool up a fixed spool spinning reel doesn't involve another pair of hands or a pencil through the middle of the line spool. Simply place the plastic spool of monofilament flat down on the floor with the manufacturer's label facing up (usually) and wind it on to your fixed spool reel from there. That will transfer your new spinning reel monofilament from the temp plastic spool to your spinning reel spool without any line twist. On 10% of occasions the manufacturer's label will need to be face down and you'll quickly know within a dozen turns of your spinning reel handle when you start winding as to which way is correct as if it's incorrect you'll see immediate line twist where as with the correct way round all you'll see are lovely line coils as you wind.