Fishing reels are vital tools that enhance your casting experience by playing a key role in casting and retrieving your fishing line. However, to achieve optimal performance and longer life of these tools, it’ll be essential to take great care of them, after and before using them. The great care for these tools involves having proper and regular maintenance practices on these tools.
Most individuals usually view routine and regular maintenance practices as a time-consuming and expensive process. Nonetheless, they are practices worth it for anyone seeking the best casting experience or results and achieving durability of their fishing reels. If you’re looking for the best guide on how to maintain fishing reel, you’re in the right place. We’ve outlined the appropriate ways to maintain your fishing reels, thus enhancing better performance and durability.
Basic cleaning and maintenance practices
The basic maintenance routines are essential for enhancing the longer use of your reels. These routine activities include rinsing off the reels after daily fishing. When rinsing them, use fresh water and let them dry before storing. However, it’ll be essential to avoid spray water when rinsing the tools as the pressure can force dirt, sand, and slat into the reel.
Before rinsing them, it’ll be vital to tighten the drags, mainly those on the spinning reels. The main aim of tightening the drags is to prevent water from seeping inside. The most appropriate method of rinsing the spinning reels is to hold them upside down, ensuring the drag faces the ground. Using this technique to rinse your tool helps prevent water from entering the reels and causing any problem.
After cleaning and drying all the reels, you can lubricate all the accessible moving parts. Lubricating the accessible moving parts is vital, especially when using your reels in dirty, muddy, or saltwater. It’s essential to ensure that your reel is clean and dry before having your next assignment, as using a dirty reel may cause damage due to the dirt and sand.
Loosening the drag while storing
The most appropriate way to maintain a stored fishing reel is to consider loosening all the reels when storing them between fishing trips. It’s important because when you leave the drags to tighten, the washers are usually compressed leading to an ineffective or jerky drag. The pressure reduction by loosening the drags is an important Maintenance technique that aims at helping them last for longer periods in better conditions even when not in use.
Ensure proper lubrication of the moving parts
Proper lubrication of all the moving parts on the reel will be essential to enhance its performance. When lubricating these moving parts, it’ll be good to consider lubricating the gears, spool spindles, and all the bearings. It’s essential to consider selecting a suitable lubricant when having this maintenance practice.
When having your lubrication maintenance practice, experts advise you to lubricate the parts lightly and avoid heavy grease or oil. Heavy oil or grease usually leaves a residue or gum up on the parts inhibiting the proper movement of the other close-tolerance parts and bearings. The best choice of light lubricant for your reels may include products like Blackmore’s Reel Magic Lubricants or Rem oil lubricants.
While lubricating, it’s good to avoid using any Vaseline or WD-40 products on any part of your reels. These products may not provide better options to the reels and might lead to complications like gumming up. Ultimately, it’s imperative to regularly lubricate your reels moving parts to guarantee optimal results and durability of the tool. If you often use the reels or have heavy usage, it’s vital to consider at least a monthly lubrication or generally have the lubrication before any fishing season.
Degreasing your stiff reels
When checking on the best way on how to maintain fishing reel, then decreasing some of the greases will be appropriate for a new reel. Most reels come with a lot of grease on the gears making it very hard when casting as the reels become a bit stiff. It’ll be essential to take the gears apart carefully and keenly remove some grease on them, to enhance their performance.
Alternatively, if you’re working with old reels to enhance their functionality, it’ll be essential to clean all the gummed-up grease and replace it with a fresh, light lubricant coating. If you find the greases hard to remove from the gears, you can use solvents such as isopropyl rubbing alcohol or Ardent Reel Kleen to loosen all them up. Pick a soft cloth and Q-Tip for applying these solvents.
Having a regular line replacement
To achieve optimal results, considering the correct procedures on how to maintain fishing reels will be an essential strategy. Replacing the reel’s line is one of the maintenance activities you should always keep in mind. Nevertheless, after how long should I replace the line replacement? There is no specific time frame for replacing your reel’s line replacement. You can choose to replace it after encountering a hard-fighting fish that may compromise the line’s property.
You can also consider replacement after having extended fishing exercise in the waters filled with snags, rocks, and other debris. These obstacles majorly lead to abrasions and nicks on the reels, thus making changing the line necessary. Additionally, when the spool’s amount gets too little because of the losing bait, changing lures, and twists, it’s a significant indicator of the need to replace your lines.
When determining if it’s the right time to change your line, you can also observe its physical appearance keenly. If the line has got signs of fading, fraying, or doesn’t have the supple feeling it had while it was new, then you need to change. Replacing and ensuring proper lines on your reels will be the best way to enhance better performance and results while using your fishing reels. When changing the lines, the experts advise choosing a jagged line to help you catch small bass or panfish without any issues.
Lastly, it’ll also be essential to strip the line, leaving it off when you’re stowing your reels and rods for a longer duration, like months. You can get them back together and in the best position when you return to your first trip on the new seasons. It helps you start over the new season with a new and fresh line, making it easier to achieve optimal results from your fishing activities.
Filling your reel to the recommended capacity
When seeking to optimize your casting performance, it’s usually imperative to ensure that you fill the reels with a spool. Especially if you’re using a baitcasting reel, most experts recommend that users fill the spool to the suitable capacity. Mostly 90 percent will be appropriate you should choose for your baitcasting reels to get optimal results while casting. It’s good to consider the proper capacity as too much spool increases the backlash chances, whereas the less spool will limit the casting distance.
If you’re using spinning reels, the best thumb rule to apply is filling the spool up to at least ⅛ inch of the line’s room to the spool lip’s edge. This maintenance technique is vital to allow you to use most of the line capacity freely. The free usage of the causing line without springing off the spool or forming tangles will be the best way to achieve optimal results and have a real casting experience.
You can also apply the ⅛ inch spool filling rule when using the spin-cast reels. However, to ensure you correctly fill the reels, it’ll be important to carefully remove the front cover from the reel to fill it well. Apart from allowing for easy spool filling to these reels, you can open the front cover to check if the amount of line on the reel’s spool is suitable. The proper reel capacity will be essential to ensure you avoid any backlash and achieve the right casting distances, which are key features to achieving optimal casting results.
Check and ensure you have proper brake adjustments
Brakes are essential parts of any fishing reels, as they help enhance the casting activities. Therefore, it’ll be necessary to consider having proper adjustments on the brakes during your maintenance practices. Proper adjustments of the mechanical brakes will be an essential routine practice that helps to have more accurate casts and fewer backlashes.
When adjusting the breaks, it’s essential to consider proper adjustments to fit the weight you intend to cast. It’s necessary to help prevent breakages and enhance the proper functioning of the reel. You can look for an expert to effectively make the adjustments or choose to do it yourself.
Check on the side plate beneath the reel’s handle to locate the brake adjustment knob when making the adjustments yourself. After getting the lure attached to the line, you can gradually depress the tool’s free-spool button; meanwhile, you should be thumbing the line lightly. After properly adjusting the brake knob, you should conduct a breaking test to check if you got the proper adjustment.
When checking if you´ve achieved the proper brake knob adjustment, you should allow the lure to descend slowly on the ground and pause without having any spool overrun. If it descends slowly or simultaneously, you’ve achieved the proper adjustments, but it’ll be essential to consider readjusting the brake knob if it falls too slowly or quickly. Readjust the brake knob up to the appropriate position to help prevent backlashes and improve the casting results.
Final thoughts
For your recreational fishing, fishing reels are essential tools that help cast for accuracy, determine the proper distance, and control the line’s tension and speed. They are also crucial in preventing the dislodgement of the hook or snap while casting. It’ll be good to have a proper routine and regular maintenance of the fishing reel and its parts to achieve optimal casting results and ensure a longer lifespan. This guide provides the best ways on how to maintain fishing reel to enhance better performance and increase its lifetime.