Reel Maintenance

[SDWalleye]

What does everyone recommend for reel maintenance? For ice fishing and open water reels/rod just to keep them smooth or to make them smooth again.

[Esox_Magnum]

Use them untill they die get new ones. Start with a high quality reel it will last many years. My muskie reels go in and get cleaned and repaired in the winter the rest I just use. I have a few Shimano Sedona spinning reels pushing 14 years old and still working flawless, and I by no means baby my equipment.

[polarsusd81]

If you take a look at the reel manufacture's websites they should have the reel schematics on the site. They also should have a maintainance section on the site that will give you directions on how to clean and lubricate your reels. I just went through all of my casting reels and a bunch of my spinning reels a couple weeks ago. Once you tear one apart, it is pretty easy to figure out what you have to do to all the different reels you have.

As for lube, Quantum Hot Sauce is hard to beat. That stuff is really nice.

[mr walleye]

I have seen so many reels that people have messed up trying to clean and lube them. [i worked in the tackle industry]

I don't recommend doing it yourself. you can bend the body on some reels if you don't put them together rite and end up with a nice paper weight.

just pay the 20 bucks or so and have it done rite.

as for mid season tune-up or for winter fishing XTREME REEL+ from Empire Manufacturing

works awesome. it's the best lube for cold weather that I have found. zero freeze-ups this winter even at temps of -25 fishing outside the house. the stuff freezes at -400. (it is a dry Teflon lube) To test it myself I put a Cardinal 763 reel in a vice and hooked it up to a drill press. I ran it at 600 Rpm for 30 min with no damage.

[Central Bassman]

Take them apart, look them over to see if everything looks normal, then add some Quantum Hot Sause and Go Fishin!!!

[slipperybob]

Reels are like guns with basic user maintenaince stripping. Don't go beyond that, unless you're certified to do more than that. I sometimes use a toothbrush or hard tip paintbrush to do the cleaning. (Well that reminds me I need to find a paintbrush seems like mine is missing.) I never pry thing apart if they don't basically come off after removing some screws. I also never force things to snap into place if they didn't require snapping them out. None of my reels require anykind of snapping part at the basics of maintainence.

On the outside, I've done the typical soapy towel and wipe off the dirt and grime buildup.

[TonkaBass]

I just cleaned some of my reels (8 curados and a stratic) took about 3 hours. I have owned some of them for up to 8 years and never cleaned them once. Figured they were due, and man did they have a lot of gunk in them, but they always worked great!