Has anyone converted the 710 to manual pick-up?

Penn made a kit for this, but I can't find one anywhere. I've also heard about guys just clipping the bail and doing some other modifications to balance out the weight.

Any info would be helpful.

Thanks.

We have a good reel guy at one of the B&Ts in Delaware and he tured me on to this manual pick-up conversion for the 710/710Z. This conversion uses the manual pick up from the old Mitchell 306. This part is very difficult to find .

To do this conversion you need to remove the bail wire, bail arm and the bail release arm. The bail wire and bail arm does not get put back on the reel while the bail release arm gets modified then put back on the reel.

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The bail release arm has a little nub on it that catches on another nub on the bearing retainer t trip the bail arm. You don't want these two pieces to catch anymore so I took a Dremel and ground the nub off the bail release arm.

The Mitchell 306 MPU gets attached to the rotor cup using the existing bail screw from the 710. Stock these don't fit together so I had to drill out the hole on the 306 MPU with a 1/4" drill bit to make the bail screw fit.

Now all you have to do is put the 306 MPU on the rotor cup with the bail screw such that the little slot on the MPU fits over the part of the bail release arm that sticks out of the rotor cup.

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I originally just cut the bail on one of my 710. It worked OK but I found this is much superior due to the better roller on the Mitchell 306 conversion.

Good Luck!

Springer,

Thanks for the very detailed info. I will look into the Mitchell conversion.