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I can see why most of the commercials would use a spinner--less chance of Murphy's law biting them on the rear and costing them $$$. You cast an eel off trying to drive it into the wind, you close the bail and reel up the slack, and re-hook. With a conventional, you either spend 15 minutes picking out the mother of all backlashes, or get out the clippers. Drop a reel like a Penn 704 or 5500 in the sand, you can give it a quick dunk and keep fishing, but with a conventional, you're out of business. When I fished the nudflats in the Canal, the same guys you'd see laughing at the tourists using spinning rods to throw plugs at breaking fish would have their Mitchell 302s on the rod out there. When fish on the beach equals a buck, you use what maximizes your fishing time, and minimizes screw-ups.
Mike, a rod builder on Long Island has been making a sweet little eel rod for the wetsuit gang out at Montauk. He takes a 10' Lamiglas GSB 120 1L graphiter blank, cuts the tip back to a size 12, and then trims the butt to where the cuustomer wants it, either 9 or 9-1/2'. It's a better 9' rod for eels than any of the stock 9' Lami blanks--very, very close in action to the old Fishers, which were extremely popular on LI.
Funny, I also abide by the "when in Rome" mindset. Here on LI, I really only use conventional for jigging and throwing eels in the inlets. For beach plugging, I go with the local flow and use spinning. Whatever works best for the individual purpose.
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