Just a friendly reminder now's the time to tear down your reels, clean and give them some lube. Since I hit the salt a lot over the year I do this every year before the season starts. Those of you lucky enough to have had Santa leave you a brand new Abu Record 6600 I'm envious, but they should get a little love before the first time they're used. My usual procedure is (usually in front of a football game) to take them apart and give them a light coat of grease on the inside "exposed" metal, take apart the drag stack then clean the drag washers using carburetor cleaner, like Gumout or whatever I happen to have in the garage, then coat the hell out of them with Cal's drag grease and reassemble. The drags on my reels always end up buttery smooth. The whole process usually takes about 20 minutes per reel. Sometimes less if I'm not particularly interested in the game. Put it this way, I have 10 Abu's and I can complete the maintenance on them in a weekend really easily. Again, just a friendly reminder.
When I did fish I would clean after all salt water trips. Salt water is not good for anything..... even wipe down your rod (get out of the gutter) as it will leave deposits
I too own many Abu's (the round ones) 5500 & 5501's for salmon trolling because they are so simple to maintain. I'm going to outfit my 4 Lamiglas kokanee rods with the 4600 & 4601's. For my steelhead plug rods I have selected some Shimano Black Bantum reels in RH & LH models. I had a few back in the mid 80's and love em but they need a professional to maintain IMHO....
