Thread: Question abour Mitchell 302

This may be a bit of a noob question, but I'm going to ask anyway. I'm lookig at picking up a mitchell 302 to put on a king rod. I've been looking around and noticed that there is a saltwater version of the 302 as well. I noticed that some of the 302's for sale on the forum are not the saltwater versions. Can either reel be used for saltwater? Are they essentially the same reel? Thanks up front for any info.

There is no difference that separates a "Saltwater" Mitchell from the same reel without that label, well not anything other than the label.

Exactly the same, I think they just added that for the "salt water" crowd so people would be more likely to buy them. The main thing you want to look for on the 302's are if all the parts are there, is their pitting in the metal, and are they clean enough to still function well. Most like to add a manual pickup and a high-speed handle to make them more pier worthy, so keep that in mind when factoring prices. Also, the drag always needs to be checked too, and that may need an upgrade but that's pretty cheap. Check out the DIY thread for more info and help.

The 302/303 are (one of) Mitchell's saltwater reels
The 302 is left hand crank (for righties) and the 303 is right hand crank (for lefties).
They are good king reels but you DEFINITELY need to upgrade the drag. Don't recommend you do it yourself unless you know what you are doing.

This definition is from the Mitchell Fishing Reel Museum glossary:

Saltwater:
Mitchell’s first version of a saltwater reel was the 302 series affectionately called The Salt Water. “Salt Water” was engraved on the 302 series and the high speed version 402 series. Mitchell made several other versions for saltwater use.

My restored 303 with a - very rare (translated expensive) NOS manual pickup. Note the engraved "Salt Water" on the smaller pic (before PUM was added). Finally the guts during the upgrade and restoration.

[img width=720 height=960]http://i1206.photobucket.com/albums/bb447/ladiver5/7a651693.jpg[/img]

[img width=240 height=320]http://i1206.photobucket.com/albums/bb447/ladiver5/514a65b9.jpg[/img]

[img width=240 height=320]http://i1206.photobucket.com/albums/bb447/ladiver5/fc9a01c6.jpg[/img]

didn't know there was a museum for mitchells :-[ , learn somthing new every day

[quote author=rodbuilderESM link=topic=2929.msg26463#msg26463 date=1363736126]
didn't know there was a museum for mitchells :-[ , learn somthing new every day
[/quote]

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