Mitchell’s

“Wedding Cake”

Tournament Reel

By: Dennis Roberts                                                                                                                             Part 2

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This article continues our review of tournament reels issued by Mitchell in the early 1960’s. Carpano & Pons of France - Mitchell Corp. extended their well-defined reel manufacturing operation to encompass specialized reels custom designed for distance and accuracy competition. The sport was at its peak and requests for special spinning reels to cast further and more accurately was in great demand. Mitchell excelled in this area and produced several models.

Mitchell’s three tiered tournament reel; unofficially named the “wedding cake”™ by D. Roberts ltd, was developed by Mitchell’s R&D team; circa 1962. With the help of professional casters, Mitchell produced an improved design from their first version with an internal system that was considered “state of the art” for its time.  Mitchell, utilizing a 300 body, made some modifications that resulted with the addition of an extra gear for changing direction of the rotor. (The following is an excerpt from Part 1, First Issue Tournament Casters.)

This additional gear provided a change in rotor direction to a clockwise rotation during retrieve. The extra gear on Mitchell’s tournament reels was implemented for the benefit of right hand casters.  We will first look at how the line comes off a Mitchell 300 during a cast without the extra gear.

Imagine a view of the Mitchell 300 looking directly towards the front of the spool downward.  You will note that the line goes on the reel in a clockwise rotation and unwinds off the spool in a counter-clockwise rotation during the cast. Now imagine the forefinger of a right hand caster pointing down towards the spool and you will see that the line is travelling up the right hand caster’s forefinger which could result in injury to the casting finger. 

The extra gear on the modified Mitchell 300 tournament models changes the rotation so that the line will travel down the forefinger of the right hand caster. It is for this reason that right hand casters who do not have access to a tournament Mitchell with the added gear, use a Mitchell 301 because of the rotational problems.

Even though a Mitchell 301 is referred to as a left hand reel, it is referring to the hand that turns the handle. The clockwise rewind also enhanced “line flow “off the spool during casting.

After the success of the two-tiered distance caster, Mitchell experimented with a three-tiered system that utilized a design where as the line was kept in check at each stage by a pronounced lip. At the edge of each lip was a small cut for the line to extend onto the next level without interfering with the flow of line coming off of the spool during the cast. The top portion is used for the shock-leader and is hand wound.  Each line guide was for a separate tier. The reel was built with special horned gearing and precision fitting. Mitchell made less than 100 of these very exotic and expensive tournament grade reels.  No manufacturer ever came close to replicating this unique and envelope-pushing design. It was without equal for it’s time.  In the realm of competition, these reels were in the highest demand by casters.

The reel body for the “Wedding-Cake” is identical to the first version tournament caster; (see Part-1). With the addition of a newly designed multi-tiered conic spool, a more subtle locking mechanism and a three tiered line pick-up system, was all that separated the two models. In principal, the spool from each version is interchangeable. There is one exception, on very early first version casters the elongated shaft was designed differently than in later versions. It was the latter that is interchangeable with the spools from the “Wedding-Cake”. It was not until many years later that other reel manufacturers utilized this general concept on their reels to increase casting distance. After its introduction, the reel became the favorite with many casters and was considered one of the best in the sport of distance casting.

The box the reel was packaged in, as shown above, is extremely rare. Only a few examples are known to exist and add to the value as compared to the reel itself. Value for a complete package may be substantial. The plain cardboard box had only one label affixed to the side. 

The very early release of this model utilized the handle from the original tournament casters having a large round disk attached to the handle and reel hub. This design was later modified to a more conservative design as indicated in the picture below. 

Collectors refer to this reel as the “Wedding Cake”™ because of the unique spool concept. This spool concept enhanced distance and accuracy as a result of each tier having a limited amount of thread bulk.  The top tier held leader material which provided a cushion during the cast to reduce line stress, break-offs, and to improve distance. This section was hand-wound before each cast. Tournament reels never had serial numbers affixed to the reel. Althrough I have seen a single letter on some. It may have been a production stamp or the builders mark, either way, not important for collecting this reel

 Note:  As of recent, this reel, although very really used in competition these days, was recently resurrected by a top competitor during the 2009 world games in Europe. This 45 year old reel was brought out of retirement when the owner was not have success with his modern day-hi tech  reel. He used this reel in the world games and out cast the best “super – distance” reels in the game and placed third in the competition.   Like wine, it just gets better with age. Their will be a full article about this crowning achievement in a future segment.

MRCC