whats more important.

[Louie]

When I first bought my own gear as before I only fished party boats in Long Island NY and rented the gear. I thought Reels were all the same.

I picked up a fairly cheap reel and cheap rod. The cheap rod still works and is fine the cheap reel worked till caught my first fish .

You can fish with a substandard rod but you can't with a substandard reel and since you said one or the other I will take a cheap rod over a cheap reel any day.

 

[Louie]

But you can catch a fish on just the rod. You can't on just the reel.

I agree when the reel simply does not reel the line in ,won't cast,etc than what is sense of it.

I actually tied line to a rod when my first reel gave out and threw the line out into the water hook and float lol.

It worked but big pain lol .