The Tibor Everglades

  by George Anderson

Of all the saltwater reels that we have sold over the years, the Tibor reels by Ted Juracsik have proven to be the best.   Ted’s Company, Juracsik Tool and Die in Delray Beach, Florida supplies the world’s casinos with sophisticated gimbals and equipment to run and position video security cameras.  Fly reels are the fun part of their business for Ted and his son who now runs the business.     Ted started making reels for Bill Pate, when Billy and George Hommell ran their shop The World Wide Sportsman in Islamorada in the Florida Keys.  The original Billy Pate reels proved so successful that Ted finally decided to design and market his own reel.  With help from famous saltwater anglers like Billy Pate, Flip Pallot and Lefty Kreh, Ted came up with his current Tibor designs.  

Unlike the Billy Pate reels, the Tibors are wider arbor style reels, allowing for more rapid line retrieve, especially important when playing fish like bonefish that often run off all your line and another hundred yards of backing.  Like the Billy Pate reels, these are all rim control spools.  All the Tibor reels are direct drive and anti-reverse reels are not offered like in the Billy Pate series.    We’ve found that anglers are a lot better off learning to use direct drive reels to fight big fish.   You can over-ride the drag setting easily by palming these reels when a fish is running.   Then getting the fish back in is simply a matter of grabbing the handle and cranking.  There is no clutch to slip.   This is especially important if you playing big fish like tarpon and billfish.   With these direct drive reels it is relatively easy to land a 100-pound tarpon in less than 15 minutes.  With the Anti-reverse reels a fish like this could take hours.    
 

Like the Abel reels, the Tibors run on three sealed ball bearings, making them extremely smooth and reliable.  They are machined from solid bar stock aluminum and held to extremely fine tolerances, especially the counter balance on the reel spools.   You’ll never find any shake or vibration here.    The drag system is one that Ted pioneered in his Billy Pate reels, utilizing a large cork drag plate that is compressed against the back side of the anodized reel spool by a humongous spring inside the reel arbor.   The tricky part of the drag that makes this the best drag in saltwater reels is how Ted has placed three spring powered ball bearing detents into the drag plate.  These drop into dimples machined into the back of the spool.  When a bonefish, permit or tarpon is running hard, these detents sing a sweet song, kind of like a BMW M-3 in line six at the redline.  The drag adjustment is more easily fine tuned than on other reels like Abels and more spring loaded detents in the drag adjust knob keep the adjustment securely in place.  
 

Finally the reels are anodized beautifully in a variety of colors to make them pretty much corrosion- proof in tropical saltwater environments.   A variety of beautifully done saltwater fish engravings placed on the backside of the reel are available at a nominal cost.     Tibor also supplies a detachable plate on the back of each reel that can be engraved with the anglers name at no extra charge.  

 
Recently Ted designed a new series of Quick Change Tibor reels to allow anglers to easily interchange spools without any tools or the possibility of small parts falling out in the boat and getting lost.   The new Quick-Change models have a slightly different look than the original series (see above photo) and the spools are easily changed by simply loosening a large knob in the center of the arbor.  
 

If you would like to order an Everglades, please give us a call.  406-222-7130