Fox Stratos 12000E

Ive been thinking about getting one of these for a while anyone with any experience with these reels good or bad

rampant wreckfish is your man on these give him a pm

couple of guys in our club have them they love them!

yep same as that phil

i have a brand new one mate ,but havent had a chance of using it yet.will let you know when i do.

Right lads


I have been using two of these for the last 5/6 months.

To be honest I am very dissapointed in them. They have all the qualities I am looking for in a fixed spool but unfortunatly they dont have the quality to back it up.

The reel is probably has the best casting spool of all the fixed spools I have used. The reel is very smooth although not really up to heavy horsing.

Now for the bad parts.

The line roller on the bail arm gets clogged very easily and needs to be stripped down after nearly every session. This will then eventually seize up and stop working altogether.

Depending on what line you use the line lay system can start to embed the line in on itself leading to much shorting casts.

There seams to be alot of corrosion in the reel in general compared to how long I have been using them .


To sum up

From new this has been my favourite reel I have ever used but it has let me down so quickly that I wont be getting any more of them.

My conclusion - same as ever............ Get a Shimano Ultegra XSB 14000

could i ask do you clean your reels after use??a quick clean after a session with luke warm water goes a long way,then a quick bit of oil and grease helps prevent parts sticking and keeps the reel in good condition.

could i ask do you clean your reels after use??a quick clean after a session with luke warm water goes a long way,then a quick bit of oil and grease helps prevent parts sticking and keeps the reel in good condition.

All the cleaning in the world wont matter if what you have in the first place is not of high quality.

As I said above, when I first got the fox reels I thought I had found the reel I was looking for and I am not knocking them for the sake of it. If I only had one of the reels I would`nt be commenting either but because I have seen similar traits in both reels that have been used prity much for the same amount of time, I feel I have given them a very good testing.

You may dissagree with me but this is my opinion on these reels.

On my reccomendation of the ultegra above- Shimano do better reels than these but I feel they are the best value reels on the market today.

i realise you are only giving your opinion on the reels ,but its just i know a few guys up here who use these reels all the time and they have had no problems at all with them.they rinse them after use some oil and grease and there as good as new,they have had no problems with corrosion either.i think from memory they have had them about 8 months .anyone else had any problems with this reel.????

funny i know someone who,s wader fell asunder after 8 months i have the same pair 4 years now without a leak or problem ?did he get a bad pair or did he abuse them ? some people are much harder on gear than others and some fish in far more demanding locations ,and some reels are crap for saltwater use ,wrampant seems to go through alot of reels so maybe he is harder on them than others but is that not a good way of reely testing them

john, the guys you know up here with the reels probably havent used them as much as JP, plus, they probably arent giving them the same workout! had the mag one in my hand on monday, cracking casting reel, but it just didnt feel as solid as the shimano range...

funny enough i spoke to one yesterday about his ,its the only reel he uses all the time along with a fox extreme horizon and he said he has had no problem with it at all so far,he fishes about 4/5 times a week.maybe he has been lucky so far but time will tell.