Smoke, I broke a reel too yesterday (2nd time in as many times out). Had to flip the bail close after every cast on BOTH of my reels after that happened. What a pain in the balls that was! Gotta break down and spend some money on some decent reels this year!
You really want to close the bail manually anyways on your spinning reels, to avoid line twist. If you close the bail by reeling, you create additional line twist which is infinitely more of a pain in the ass =)
I bought another reel and ordered parts for the broken one just the same. Thanks for the info though. I don't like fishing with broken gear. We're already at a disadvantage fishing our cartopper against the big boats in the regular tourneys, but we try our best to keep up. 
