RECREATION : Abel’s Reels of Fortune : Fishing: Camarillo man makes some of the world’s finest equipment in his machine shop. Then he has the pleasure of trying them out on the world’s most exotic fish.

An outdoor writer once noted that the largest and strongest Abel fly reel--which one can own for a mere $1,200--has such a perfect drag system that it will “stop anything short of a Harley.”

Of course, for anyone foolish enough to embed a barbed fly hook in the average Harley-Davidson owner, getting him to stop would not be the biggest concern. Getting away from him would be a much higher priority.

The drag system on the Camarillo-made Abel 5 fly reel will, however, also slow and eventually stop the largest blue marlin. Or mako shark. Or giant tuna. And because of that, several thousand of them are sold each year to dedicated--and wealthy--saltwater anglers.

All of which makes Steve Abel a happy guy.

He’s happy when he’s casting to bonefish off the South Pacific’s Christmas Island. He’s happy as he pursues trout on a calm lake beneath a posh fishing lodge in remote Canada. He’s happy wading the endless rivers of Alaska and he’s happy stalking huge brown trout in the crystal waters of New Zealand and very happy working his reel over the rushing waters of Belize.

Abel, 42, spends 10 or 12 weeks a year fishing in some of the most spectacular parts of the world. Well, most people call it fishing. Abel, who just three years ago in his Camarillo machine shop pioneered what is among the most expensive fly-fishing reels in the world, considers it research.

Fishermen are funny that way.

“Time spent fishing is the most important time I can spend for my business,” he said. “It’s research. Lodge owners test my equipment and by word of mouth it gets back to my potential clients. And I won’t sell anything without testing it thoroughly myself. So for me, fishing is just a solid way of conducting my business.”

Abel stopped just short of delivering the “It’s a nasty job but somebody’s got to do it,” line.

Abel’s ability to close up his office and hang the Gone Researchin’ sign on his door nearly one week each month clearly separates him from the average angler. Of course, the hefty price tags on his reels also separates their owners from the average angler.

The prices begin at $325 for the smallest of the eight models he manufactures and his worldwide sales of 5,000 reels in 1990 averaged $400 each, generating gross revenues of $2 million.

That figure accounts for between 20% and 30% of the gross revenues of Abel Products, Inc. The bulk of his business comes from the manufacture of precision parts for the aviation, medical and computer industries. Abel components are even used in the construction of the space shuttle.

The Abel reel has, in just three years, become the Rolls-Royce of the fly-fishing industry. Anyone who takes the sport seriously and who doesn’t flinch at the price tag of the reel seems to own one.

A recent fly-fishing show on television featured actor Michael Keaton wading the clear waters of Argentina, scoring repeatedly on huge trout. He not only used an Abel reel, he wore an Abel Reels hat.

When Batman uses your equipment--after all, the guy has rocket-fired grappling hooks built into his chest or something like that--you can’t help but, well, go fishing a lot.

Abel’s career in the manufacturing business began just weeks after high school, when he took a job in a small shop in Newbury Park. He opened his own machine shop in 1977 and shortly thereafter was introduced to fly fishing during an outing in Montana with friends. His first fly reel was a $15 Martin automatic, a clumsy thing that retrieved the line with a push of a button and sounded like a bad fan.

And so there was Abel, who had a multimillion dollar machine shop equipped to create and manufacture just about anything, and his dislike of the fly reels that were available on the market.

Consequently . . . nothing happened.

“I just didn’t make the connection between my machine shop and fly reels,” Abel admitted. “Not for years. Looking back, it seems a little ridiculous that I didn’t.”

So as his passion for his new-found sport of fly-fishing increased along with the financial ability to travel to some of the best trout streams in North America, he continued using the available reels and not liking them. It wasn’t until he was introduced to saltwater fly-fishing that he finally made the connection between the sport and his shop.

With the size and power of the marlin and tarpon and even the brute strength of the smaller bonefish pushing fly reels to--and often over--their limits, Abel realized he had the ability at his shop to build a reel that could withstand the most punishing, blistering run of a fish.

“I went out and started buying the best fly reels on the market at that time, and brought them into my shop and began taking them apart,” Abel said. “I like something in one reel, something in another reel. I wouldn’t like a certain thing in one reel. And I began to improvise, putting the best qualities of each reel into one unit.”

After more than a year of research, what emerged was a high-tech reel, precisely bored and milled and utilizing cork from Portugal as the main component in its drag system. And carrying a hefty price tag. But the testing of the reel, often with the unusual techniques of backing over one repeatedly in the parking lot with his Ford or forcing the spool to turn at several thousand RPMs on a lathe for hours, proved to Abel that he had created something special.

And he also quickly learned that the price tag was not an obstacle to everyone.

He went into production of the salt-water reels in May of 1988 and within nine months had sold 4,000 of them. Smaller reels for freshwater fishing went into production soon and he sold a total of 4,000 more reels the next year, half of them to trout and salmon anglers.

He sold 5,000 in 1990 and expects to sell roughly the same number in 1991.

“I sell a lot of them to doctors and lawyers,” said Abel, who now has a network of 400 authorized dealers around the world. “But a lot of them are sold to regular folks, people who just want the best. You spend $5,000 on a once-in-a-lifetime fishing trip to Alaska and then the trip is ruined because your $50 reel fails under a big salmon, you feel pretty ridiculous.

“The reel is the single most important piece of fishing equipment you can own.”

Capitalizing on the name recognition, Abel has begun manufacturing fishing rods and accessories, including luggage. And he continues to test it all.

“Two weeks in June, at a remote lake in the Kamloops area of British Columbia,” Abel said. “The rainbow trout are as long as your arm and you can catch them all day long. I’ve been going there for a few years now, and I wouldn’t miss it for anything.”

Abel leaned back in his plush chair in his office. Above his head was a mounted 35-pound king salmon that he took from the pristine Bristol Bay area of Alaska. To his right was a shimmering eight-pound Kamloops rainbow trout from last year’s trip to that region.

And he smiled.

“Just research,” he said.