Fix it: Zebco Fishing Reels
Our old Zebco and Shakespeare spincast fishing reels don’t work at all, unless you do a little service, then they work great!
Casting a fishing line into the water and reeling it back in is basically like operating a water pump, pulling small amounts of water from the lake into the reel with each cast. If the water is left inside the reel (particularly an enclosed spincast reel like the Zebco and Shakespeare reels we have), the internal metal parts will soon rust and the reel will stop casting. I don’t know why I didn’t realize that our reels were full of water, but now I do.
Figure 1: Shakespeare fishing reel. Clean, lube, reassemble.
The best solution is to open the reel after use and let the string and internal parts dry. The next best solution is to disassemble, clean, lube, and reassemble the reel. The Abu Garcia Silicote grease is cheap and works very well, but anything similar (like the common silicon plumbing grease shown below) should work just as well.
Figure 2: Reel lube works great
Figure 3: Danco silicon plumbing grease probably works just as well.
Once the reel is cleaned and lubed, it’ll work like new, and that’s way better than trashing it and buying a new reel every year. These reels aren’t expensive, but fixing feels a whole lot better than trashing. Highly recommended.