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Ive fished the big manaul bail reels for over 40 years both offshore and surf. Gaddis is right on, your rod hand gets to just naturally pickup the line with the index finger, it becomes a reflex action, when your freelining live bait that same index finger keeps the slack line on the bail roller. I always set my self up with the spool fully extended and the bail roller at 12 oclock when I finish my cast.
Mitchell Garcia had kits for several of their spinning reels, so they could come from the factory as PUMs or you could keep a kit in your tackle box as insurance. I personnally prefered just getting a new reel and turning it into a PUM right off the bat. Today my smallest reel is a Mitchell Garcia 406 HS with PUM, Its kept ready to go with 20# Power Pro and makes a great surf and shoreline rod/reel combo. Next up I have a European Mitchell Garcia 396 factory PUM reel. This model has a rotating head specifically designed for the heavier PUM and counterweighted (balanced for it). the Ball bearing roller head is SS and is the extended SS PUM arm, which is fixed to the rotationg head with some deep large screws. Ive used mine offshore with 30# Power Pro Alot. Next up is my favorite the European Mitchell Garcia 498 Pro, its a massively built PUM reel from the git go for European distribution only. Wasn't a cheap reel either. I keep mine spooled with 50# power pro for the big toothy cirtters down in Mexican waters.
I do have a pair of Penn reels as well , the 8500SS and the 9500SS however a cavet here, the reels where made for bails, as such the factory PUM kits work, but they have one big fault IMHO, you take an all metal reel, and you attach a steel pum roller with a plastic arm. As such I limit my use of these two reels to far lesser tasks like Surf or Shorline fishing, line sizes not exceeding 30#. Its too bad too, the big 9500SS should have been just as good as the old 498.
As another comment above, the little reels I use for 4# test and under have their bails, just never ran into anythng as small as the old Mitchell 408 or the old Diawa first model BG that I liked as much so those old reels have been going strong for me for nearly 40 years as well.
Richard