This section is generally annual maintenance. For regular maintenance items, please refer to Good Practices.
Reel Maintenance
- Clean
- Inspect
- Lubricate
Maintain your reel according to manufacture’s specifications. Some reels can and should be completely disassembled while others should only be partially disassembled. Here are a few links to manufacture websites. If your reel is not in the list, there is no harm in following Shimano’s recommendations – their recommendations apply to most reels and don’t get into disassembly.
- Alutecnos – navigate to Manuals and look for maintenance tips
- Nautilus – nice job!
- Quantum – good
- Shimano – nice job!
- Van Staal – good
- ZeeBaas – nice job!
These companies don’t have maintenance recommendations, but do have service a department. I am unlikely to review these links often and it is possible that maintenance has been added. You might also grock the net for blogs with recommended maintenance – however, unlike the manufacturer’s recommendations, you have little recourse when following the directions of an anonymous blogger.
I gave up looking for maintenance on the sites of these companies.
- Abu Garcia
- Hardy – Their website had technical issue when I visited
- Orvis – Do they even sell reels any more?!?!
- Vosseler

