I have 2 unlisted REC ultralight reel seats which are not industry standard. None of my little trout reels fit. Is there any fly reel out there still made with a smaller foot? No luck with Forbes.

I wasn't aware there was an industry standard for fly reel feet or seats. But that stinks! I wonder if you can get REC to swap the seats for you. Might be less expensive than having to buy two new fly reels.

Has anyone ground down a reel foot to make it fit?

I measured the reel feet on 8 different reels and they were all 2 3/8" to 2 1/2" long. A 2 1/2" dia reel was the same as a 4 3/4" dia reel. The foot on the small reel looks to long and the large reel looks short. Really doesn't make any sense, would think that the longer the larger the reel the longer the foot?

The AFTMA reel foot standard has been around about 10 years. The purpose of the standard as I recall was so that any reel would fit any reel seat. Prior to that you really needed to take the rod into the shop and make sure what you were buying would fit your rod. I went through that with an Orvis reel about 15 years ago and spent about an hour working on it with a file so it would fit.

Just because the standard exists doesn't mean it is working. Okuma for example claims to adhere the standard but their reels don't fit several types of seats I've tried them on, ranging from a $5 A7 up to a $70 Bellinger. The length is not the problem. It's that some seats have such extremely thin slots on the fixed hood that only certain reels will fit. This is why I really like the Fuji (or similar) graphite skeletons or the PacBay UL3 (and clones). I've never had a reel not fit in one of these seats. That's important to me because I switch reels from rod to rod all the time.