14. Care of Equipment

The man who discovered salt did a wonderful thing for mankind. Salt adds taste to your food. It melts the ice on your sidewalk. It's great stuff for tanning hides. It gives a wonderful tang to sea air.

But along about the time you're heading home from the fishing grounds you're probably wishing that the gent who dis­covered salt had stopped short of sprinkling the stuff all over your tackle.

Because salt and fishing tackle don't mix. And nobody yet has figured out how to make them mix. If you let it, salt will corrode all those intricate little metal parts in your reel that it can get at. Salt takes the luster and the shine off your rod. Salt turns your bright chrome guides green.

And there are only two things you can do about it: stick to freshwater fishing or clean away the salt before it can go to work on your equipment. The first would be treason and so there's nothing else for you to do but keep your gear clean and shiny bright, ready to catch fish again tomorrow and next week and next year and the year after that.

Actually, there's nothing to it if you'll spend a mere five minutes with your gear after every fishing safari Maybe not even that long.

A look at the instruction book that came with your reel will show you that it's a simple oiling and cleaning job. Fol­low those directions and you won't go wrong—as long as you stick to the simple things and don't try to take your reel apart for a major overhaul. But more about that later.

Start with your rod. Wipe it down from tip to butt with a damp cloth, work the rag gently in and around the guides, wipe inside the ferrule, give the threads on the reel seat a good going over, wipe the rod dry and apply a thin coat of a light lubricating oil—sewing machine oil is fine—and the task is done.

Turn to your terminal tackle next, and you'll have all the uncomplicated things out of the way before moving on to your reel.

Run all the lures you've used that day through a fresh warm bath. Check your hooks for bits of bait and clean them off if necessary. Look for rust while you're at it, and take a piece of sandpaper to them if need be. Hone the points and restore needle sharpness whenever necessary.

Dig out the just-used snaps and swivels and leaders and sinkers and give them a quick going over in the warm water. Wipe them dry. Check your line for frayed spots and cut them away if you find any.

Now you're ready to go to work on the reel.

Start by removing the spool and dousing reel and spool separately in warm water. Most fishermen hold them under a faucet. But we prefer to run about six inches of warm water in a laundry tub and squish reel and spool back and forth, applying a bit of vigor to the operation.

That will remove most of the sand you've collected during the day. But it won't remove it all, particularly the beads that have mixed with the oil you applied to the moving parts the last time you cleaned your gear. So take a soft rag and wipe the remaining sand away. Use a small paint brush, a soft toothbrush or a pastry brush to get into the spots you can't clean with rag and fingertip.

With the exterior cleaning job done, you turn next to the oiling of all the outer moving parts that any all-thumbs char­acter can get at, even us. You've got the booklet that came with your reel in front of you. It contains a page or two of step-by-step instructions and they're all probably well-illus­trated to make sure clumsy oafs like us don't go wrong.

Let's take those steps one at a time.

1. Throw your anti-reverse lever into the "off' position to enable you to remove the handle by turning it backwards. That opens a hole through which your lubrication oil can flow to the drive gear. Apply a few drops and put the handle back on.
   
   
2. Put a couple of drops of oil on the two bearing points of the pickup bail—there's one on each side of the rotating head of your reel.
   
   
3. Oil the moving parts of your handle.
   
   
4. Now a drop or two of oil on the anti-reverse lever.
   
   
5. There are lubricating spots on the gear-housing cover plate of the smaller reels. Apply a couple of drops of oil to each. The larger surf reels have a button-type cap with a coin slot for easy removing; take it off and squeeze a light grease into the interior mechanism.  Since  a spinning reel operates at a slow speed you should use a lubricant that* s heavier than oil. Your tackle shop will sell you a tube for about a dime.
   
   
6. Drop a couple of drops of oil on the reel axle.
   
   
7. Add a dash of oil to your drag adjusting knob.
   
   
8. Apply a thin coating of oil to the outer surfaces of the reel just as you did with the rod.

That's all there is to it. Stop right there and do no more. But do it immediately after every fishing trip—consider the chore as much of a necessity as cleaning the fish you've caught —and you'll have no trouble with you tackle.

About once every year, say when winter is rolling in and it's time to kiss the fishing season goodbye, you may want to do a more thorough cleaning job. That will mean you'll have to get at the inner workings of your reel. Well, go right ahead ... as long as you go ahead carefully, keeping the instruc­tion booklet in front of you to guide you and guard you against getting parts out of place.

Before you start, make sure you have all the necessary tools. You’ll need a couple of small screwdrivers and a reel wrench made to fit your spinner or, better still, a combination tool which most reel manufacturers make to fit their product. You can get the combination tool for a dollar at your tackle shop, and you won't need the screwdrivers or wrench.

Have rags and brushes handy and you'll have to have a good cleaning agent. White gasoline and kerosene are good, but they leave a residue and they're combustible. Carbon tetrachloride is better because it leaves no residue, but it's toxic and it can dissolve plastic parts. So, whichever cleaning agent you use, you're going to have to be extremely careful.

You naturally start this winter cleaning operation by first giving your reel the same going-over that you give it after every fishing trip. But now you add the following steps.

1. Remove the rotating head by loosening the hex nut. This will allow you to do a more thorough job of cleaning both the head and the axle. To put the head back where it belongs, be sure to line up the key and keyway in the hub of the head, slide the head back on the axle and replace the hex nut with your combination tool.
   
   
2. Remove the handle and cover plate and clean and lubri­cate all the moving parts inside the housing. Use the special lube tube you bought at the tackle shop but be sure not to use too much grease. All that's needed is to give all traction points a light but thorough going over.
   
   
3. Check your bail to make sure it hasn't been bent out of  shape. Your booklet will show you how it should look. If it needs reshaping you can do so by carefully running the loop between thumb and forefinger, applying gentle pressure with your thumb.

More than that we suggest that you do not do in cleaning your reel. Not that more cleaning won't be necessary, your reel being the intricate and fine mechanical instrument that it is.

But when you get beyond Step Three you're getting beyond the do-it-yourself category. You're getting into a field that's meant for experts. Peek into your instruction booklet again and you'll see what we mean.

You'll find exploded drawings showing the inner workings of your reel in blown up detail. Look at them well. You'll see fifty or sixty parts, everyone of them vital to the reel's opera­tion and many of them as fine as a watch spring. Get just one of them out of place and your reel won't work.

Read the instructions carefully and they'll tell you how to take your reel apart and, assuming you've succeeded in getting it apart, how to put the pieces back together again. And then you'll come to the most important instruction of all: the sug­gestion that you don't do any major overhauling at all.

Instead the booklet will suggest that you send the reel back to the factory or to an accredited dealer to have the work done for you—done expertly and done properly. Maybe there'll be a charge, maybe the work will be free and part of the guarantee that should go with every reel. But cost or no cost, you'll be money ahead if you save your do-it-yourself tendencies for things like broken alarm clocks and leave your reel repairs to trained technicians.

You won't have to send your reel back to the manufacturer very often. Say about every three years if you're a weekend fisherman, perhaps every two years if you fish at the crack of every dawn come rain or come shine.

And when the experts return it to you, you'll know it's been made as good as new. It will have been inspected, cleaned, oiled, all damaged parts will have been replaced, it will have been factory tested and factory approved and factory perfect

All that's left for you to do is some perfect fishing.

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