Ursel Boggs

I bought a discontinued Enigma on clearance at BPS for $69.99. I believe the original MSRP was $99.99. Mine is 5.3:1 gear ratio, and has braking via spool tensioner, cast-control potentiometer, and a four-point magnetic system. This may be the only reel under $100.00 that offered all three common backlash-control mechanisms, and the heavier, cheaper materials required to hit that price point make for a somewhat ungainly hunk of machinery, which seems crammed into a somewhat bulky low profile-style chassis. Balance is not great, and there's some rattle from the cheap plastic latch that holds the bezel over the magnetic brake. I limit my reels to $150 or cheaper -- Lew's Tourny MGs, Shimano Caenans and Caiuses (Caiui?), a used Curado -- so I have used all three braking systems, but have no experience with the kind of high-end reel that might offer all three. That said, THE INTERACTION OF THE BRAKING SYSTMES REQUIRES CONSIDERABLE EXPERIMENTATION. My reel came from the factory with the magnetic system entirely turned off, and with the cast control knob at "5". At these settings, the spool tensioner does not function at all, i.e. no bait under an ounce can pull line regardless of the looseness of the spool tensioner. Only when the cast control was dropped to "4" (two clicks), did the spool tensioner work in the accustomed fashion with a half ounce chatterbait I had tied on. At this setting, however, late-in-the-cast backlashing was ridiculous, nesting right up around the edges of the most careful thumb. I engaged one of the four magnetic brakes, left the cast control at "4," adjusted the spool tensioner until the chatterbait was dropping slowly, and was able to smoothly cast 35 yards with little effort. Again, this is a bulky package (I wonder if an Ambassador-type, round chassis might have been a better way to house all this), so there's a lot of torque on retrieve, but the action is reasonably smooth. Some nice stylish touches to the bezels. B- for a decent single-reel intro to brake system interactions for a benjamin, but with predictable flaws.