Ok, so a while back my friends and I went out on the Miss Hatteras. We were reeling them in the whole time and it was a blast. A family next to us had brought their own rods and seemed to be reeling them in twice as fast and more easily. What set up do you think they had? I did not even think to ask them at the time...
A good reel that is smooth with "infinite anti-reverse" is a pleasure to work with. I do not know what the headboats supply, but my guess is they are cheap reels that can be easily serviced/replaced as needed. As far as reeling them in faster, that's going to be the gear ratio. A reel with a higher gear ratio like 6/1 or 7/1 will do more rotations of the bail (or spool) per rotation of the handle. It allows you to gain line faster, but you sacrifice power. A lower gear ratio is good for reels that you'd use when you target large fish, e.g. the large gold Penn/Shimano reels you've probably seen on charter boats. I have higher gear ratios on my medium sized spinning rigs that I use from the pier and surf and then lower ratios on my larger conventional rigs.
EDIT: I do have a Daiwa Saltist conventional reel with a pretty high ratio, but it also has a larger handle (longer radius) that helps with any power issues, supposedly, but I've never caught anything bigger than a 5 lb skate with it. :-)
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