I would use a bicycle front peddle cog on a reel and use the back cog with a free wheel to be driven by a motor. Anyone tried this method to make a electric reel. It should not be to difficult to make it work.
Yes it would work, but. The problem I see it is that those free wheeling cogs are made for bicycles and designed for the hub with a rather large thread. You need to find the same thing that is as commercially available (cheap due to high production numbers) but with a centre hub that has a woodruff key to lock onto the shaft of the electric motor that will be driving it.
They are available but are very expense last time I looked.