Good Day to you all.

I'm a recent registrant to the FAOL bulletin and it's taken me a good few days to read through the many recent forum submissions on the BB. It's a great forum and I'm happy to say that I have already gained valuable information from all your comments, and wondered if I could possibly tap your brains on a specific problem I am having.

Firstly, I am from Capetown, South Africa and our best trout fishing in the region is small freestone streams for wild spawn trout. Trout are not indigenous to South Africa and they were introduced roughly about 100 years ago and have taken relatively well to many of our streams. The trout in our local streams do not grow very large and a fish of 14-16 inches is regarded as a good sized fish (but over 20inchers have been caught), with most fish caught being closer to 10-12 inches. As you might well gather, the small sizes of these fish combined with the small size of our freestone streams makes lightweight setups the perfect rig to fish with. Anything 3wt and lower is the norm.

I am currently looking for a repleacement reel for my 1wt and 2wt setups and have been eyeing the Lamson/Waterworks range of reels, particularly the Litespeed and Velocity ranges because I personally prefer the look of them to the ULA-P series. I just wanted to know if anyone has had experience using these reels on lightweight setups and if they would be well suited? Unfortunately I cannot find a local tackle dealer that stocks them so I cannot have a look at them myself so your input would be greatly valued.

Drag system is not all that important with such small fish except that I'd like to know if the drag makes a clicking sound when line is pulled off. It may seem petty, but in the middle of summer our water levels are low and the fish can spook at the snap of a twig at times. What I am more interested in is lightness and finish (Non reflective finishes are better). I do a bit of underwater photography too so i'd like to get your opinions of which of them looks the best to you as it's always nice to have a good looking reel in the background behind the fish.

If anyone has any other reels they feel would be appropriate for my needs I'd like to hear about them too.

Thanks in advance for your help.

Bastion.