REEL MAINTENANCE – SPINNING REEL

This article was published in the November 2002 issue of Rod And Line fishing magazine.

In my many years of fishing, I have seen all sorts of characters fishing with all types of reels in various condition of neglect. Some would give off a grinding sound when cranked. Others looked as though they were going to fall apart at any moment. It was a wonder how the anglers could keep on using them.

Use a tray to organize the parts to prevent losing them. A discarded egg tray is very handy.

To me a smooth and well-serviced reel is an ecstasy to use. You do not feel exhausted spinning the whole day. The most important thing is when you were locked on to a whopper. You do not have to divide your concentration worrying about whether it will let you down or otherwise.

There were also some “friends” who came complaining that their reels were not working properly. When confronted, they would swear on their ancestors’ graves that they have never opened the reel before. The funny thing was that the reel that they had ‘never opened before’ had parts fitted in all the wrong places. Some even had their shafts, springs or pins bent out of shape. How they chose to buy a reel that was not working properly in the first place is beyond my comprehension. I had also come across reels (costing four figures) so corroded and fused by saltwater that I had to use a plastic mallet to know them apart!

A safety pin is handy for keeping the parts in their proper sequence.

I am not claiming to be an expert in reel maintenance. But when you see many beautiful and expensive reels being ruined by neglect or clumsy dismantling, I feel it is my duty to share whatever little knowledge that I have with our readers. At least we can pass our time fruitfully during off seasons.

Every reel comes with a schematic diagram. Do keep yours, as it can be very useful.

To start off, I would like to choose the spinning reel, as it is the most widely used reel around this region. The number of models of spinning reels in the market is mind-boggling. Some are quite cheap, while others may cost thousands. No matter what price of the reel is they somehow work on almost the same principle with some refinements here and there.

Always remember to keep your reels well lubricated and clean after every trip. Spray a coat of WD40 or any water repellant spray before and after an outing. (Bear in mind though, some water repellants are harmful to some PVC). At least once a year, do strip it down for a total overhaul. If you are using it for saltwater fishing then the strip down should be more frequent.

Before we start to strip our reels we should have some of the things listed below.

Turn the knob anti-clockwise to unscrew. Pull out the spool and remove the drag washers for cleaning and oiling.

THINGS TO HAVE

A:  Have a tray ready so that you can keep all the parts in their proper places. The tray will save you a lot of heartaches looking parts that suddenly sprout legs.

B:  Please do use proper tools for the job at hand. The screwdriver should fit snugly in the screw slot or else damage will occur and thus lowering the resale value of your reel.

C:  Proper solvent should be used to clean the grease and grimes from your reel. I normally use kerosene of petrol. Petrol will dry totally, but will leave a layer of additives on your reel parts, while kerosene must be wipe dry. One way of overcoming this problem is just dip it in spirit after cleaning with kerosene. Never use thinner, as the corrosive nature of thinner will damage the rubber parts, paintworks and plastic in your reel. Be careful when using these solvents as they are very flammable. Use them in the open as the circulation of air is better.

D:  A good stiff paint brush is very useful in getting rid of sand, grease and grits from your reel parts. The fine bristles can reach into most crevices.

E:  To lubricate spinning reel bearings, I normally use light oil with molybdenum disulfide. As for grease, those with molybdenum disulfide are my preferred ones. This grease is to be used on the shafts, gears and other moving parts that encounter a lot of friction.

F:  Have a roll of toilet tissue handy. They are good absorbent of solvent and are soft enough to be used for cleaning the bodywork.

G:  A big safety pin or any other device to help keep washers, nuts or bearings in their proper sequence is very helpful to have around.

After removing the ratchet gear and washers , unscrew the hexagonal nut to take out the rotor.

Uncover the bail arm spring to clean and grease. Remember to grease the bail-tripping lever at the bottom.

Unscrew all the screws and detach the side cover of the reel. To remove main shaft, unscrew the small screw "X" holding it to the oscillating slider.

The drive gear, oscillating gear and slider can now be removed.

DISASSEMBLING THE REEL

1.       Remove the drag knob and pull out the spool.

2.       Slowly take out the cir-clips and then the drag washers from the spools. Soak in solvent, dry thoroughly and apply oil or grease (depending on the make of the reel). Do make sure they are arrange in their proper order before putting them back in.

3.       To detach the rotor, first pull out the ratchet gear and washer. Unscrew the hexagonal nut holding the rotor before pulling out the rotor.

4.       Open the cover of the bail arm spring. Clean and grease. (Be careful with the spring. Once it springs out you will have a hard time finding it).) Oil all moving parts.

5.       Remove the reel handle, clean and oil.

6.       Detach side cover plate.

7.       Unscrew the screw holding the shaft to the oscillating slider. Detach shaft and the slider. Clean and grease.

8.       After the shaft has been removed then only can the drive gear be taken out. Clean the gear, bearings and then apply grease and oil.

9.       To access the main shaft bearing and the anti-reverse bearing, unscrew the cover situated on the front of the real body.

10.   The anti-reverse roller bearing needs to be clean and grease too.

11.   To re-assemble, reverse all the steps taken.

Unscrew the cover to remove the main bearing, anti reverse bearing and the rotor drive shaft.

THINGS TO REMEMBER

a.       All moving parts must be oiled or greased to prevent metal to metal contact. This will reduce friction and dissipate heat thus prolonging the life of all parts.

b.      All springs, cir-clips and the likes must be treated with care. Once misplace or should they spring out accidentally, a lot of time will be wasted looking for them. Replacement is difficult to procure.

c.       All reels come with schematic diagrams in their boxes. Please keep yours, as it will save you a lot of time and heartaches when assembling your reel.

d.      Screws must not be over tightened as the threads are very easily stripped.

e.      All exposed bearings must be cleaned thoroughly so as to remove sand and grits. They must be totally dry before oiling or else the solvent will thin the oil too much to be of any use.

f.        Sealed maintenance free bearings are exactly what the name implies. Please do not clean with solvent as it might seep into the bearing compartment rendering the lubricant useless.

g.       To check for the proper working condition of the bearing, put a pencil through it and spin the bearing. The bearing should spin smoothly. Should there be any grating sound then it should be cleaned and oiled properly. In case there is not improvement, the bearing concerned should be replaced.

h.      Please bear in mind the grease and oil  are there to:

i)                    Prevent metal to metal contact

ii)                   Dissipate heat

iii)                 Prevent rust.

iv)                 Stop water from coming into contact with metal or washers.  

Bail roller bearing. Make sure the roller turns after reassembly.

HARUAN BONANZA

This article was published in the October 2002 issue of Rod And Line Fishing Magazine.

After a few half-hearted casts at the three sterile looking ponds, I almost gave up. These three ponds looked very quiet. There were no weeds covering the edges of the ponds. Instead of ever expanding concentric rings, the water surface was like a giant mirror. Seeing my dejected look Raju suggested I try one more pond about a hundred meters away.

Ronnie at work. Look at that pond. How can there be no grandfather haruans.

Standing on the edge of this pond, my heart was beating like a racing car engine piston. The edges were covered with over hanging weeds and shaded by some trees in some parts. The water surface was full of floating plants and runners. This, my friend, was the perfect haruan pond.

Being a businessman dealing with fruits, Raju has all the connections regarding orchards and fruit plantations. He first told me about these ponds about a month ago. These ponds were located in a huge neglected durian plantation near Ipoh. Fenced up, neglected plantation ponds translate into haruan Shangri-La.

The gang with the catches.

My first cast was passed, but not the second. Subsequently almost every second cast produced a strike. Seeing a small water inlet, I cast my frog beyond it. After a few turns of the spinning reel handle, my frog was whacked. What followed was haruan fishing beyond my wildest dream. James waiting some twenty meters away could not take it anymore and came bulldozing through the bush. The whole area, covered with tall grass was flattened by him in no time. I had to shift to another place when James budged in and placed his bulk in front of me. All in he landed about fifteen haruans before our supply of twenty frogs was exhausted (reconnaissance trip lah). Raju was beaming from ear to ear on the way back carrying all the haruans we gave him.

That night, James and I sensed a lot of hints and veiled threats coming from Mong and Ronnie. In the end we had no choice as we were threatened with erasing our names from their “friends” list. Furthermore, that night all the delicious food that we had was fully paid for.

Come Sunday, James and I had Ronnie and Mong tagging along. Fanning out to the four sides of the pond, we settled down to fish. The whole surface of the pond was covered with a kind of runners crisscrossing each others. Mong was the first to land a fish. Next was James. Everywhere I looked at least one of my friends was either landing or fighting a haruan.

In haruan fishing, it is not a matter of blind casting all over the place. We must either think like a haruan or “attend the same university together with them” to improve our chances of landing one. The usual places to look for them were the banks (weed covered and undercut) of the ponds. Shaded banks with floating vegetation were also their favorite haunts. Another regular hang-out would be some sunken logs. Water outlet and inlets were normally productive areas too.

Yours truly casting out to the pond. See the floating runners on the surface? They made landing the haruans quite difficult.

Contrary to the usual practice, fishing for haruans here did not require the usual camouflage tactics or the need for us to be quiet. Haruans were so plentiful and hungry here that even if we were to use spoons, we could land plenty of them. The only reason I did not use lure was because of the abundance of weeds. With my pay, I would have to work in three different jobs to cover all the lost lures. We were of the opinion that any new angler who did not know how to fish would catch at least one.

There was this corner of the pond, shaded by an overhanging tree that caught my interest. My deduction was, being shady, that place should at least housed one haruan. Instead of one, I caught four of them. All one got to do was to cast the frog to the weed edge, twitch it slightly and then retrieve.

Ronnie unhooking one of his haruans.

Bang! The frog would be grabbed. Well, landing the haruan was another problem though. The floating runners were always a nuisance. Most of the time, the snakeheads would tangled themselves around these weeds and achieved their freedom. The beauty of this place was after losing one, all you had to do was to keep on casting to the same spot and you would be rewarded again.

As the haruans that we caught looked like being produced from some cookie assembly lines. They were all of the same size and length, plus or minus a few grams. None of them weighed more than 800gms. They could not be from the same set of parents nor being born on the same day. Being 800gm in weight, their parents must be bigger. That was what was going through my mind. Every cast that I made was full of the eternal hope of landing those parents or the whopper grandparents. Somehow images of those XXLs lurking under the weed was always on my mind.

Sauntering over to where Ronnie was busy unhooking his haruan, I inquired about his result. That satisfied grin on his face was his answer. Looking closer I noticed that his eyes were wide and twinkling with indescribable satisfaction.

Our rigs here were the usual haruan rig. All our rigged frogs had their legs cut. If the legs were not cut, then the haruans would get free lunches most of the time. You see when the haruans grabbed the frogs, most of the time they would get the legs. Normally they would run with the frogs dangling out of their mouths. Even though you wait for a wee bit longer, you would still yank the frog out of their mouths. My usual method was to wait for about three seconds from the first tap before I struck. By then the haruan would have taken the whole frogs into their mouths.

On the way out we met some contract workers who were employed to clear the undergrowth to make the plantation more presentable to any prospective buyers. Most of the haruans were given to them so as to pave the way for our next trip here (the Malaysian colloquial term is ‘jacking’). We got the shock of our lives a week later. The whole pond was drained. Well, the typical Malaysian selfish character of “One day’s curry” was at work again. Instead of getting a steady supply of haruans, they cleared the whole lot!

Now you know why some anglers guard their secret spots like Ali Baba’s treasure. Most of us acquired this habit by being victims of circumstances.

KALUI FIGHTING AT TANJUNG TUALANG

(This article was published in the September 2002 issue of Rod and Line Fishing magazine.)

All unarmed martial arts can be roughly divided into two categories. One is the hard style while the other is the soft style. The former is characterized by its firm stances combined with sudden attacks of speed and power. The soft style is poetry in motion. The moves of the soft style are smooth and easy flowing. It makes use of the opponents’ strength to its own advantages.

Why am I talking about martial arts in a fishing magazine? Well, if the fighting styles of our fresh water game fishes can be classified, then I think this method of explanation is the most appropriate. The tomans, sebaraus, kelahs and their likes should fit the hard style fighters to the dot. Their powerful leaps, fast rushes and snagging tactics make sure of that. The main exponent of the soft style aquatic world is none other than our giant gouramis.

Being flat bodied, it really uses it greater surface area to great advantage. Fighting a big kalui is like having a bout with a Tai Chi master. It will l glide from left at right, resisting your hard pumps. When you least expected it, the kalui will move with lightning speed to cut you off against some underwater snags (that is if its fine teeth do not cut you off first). A contest with a big kalui is always a bruising affair, testing your stamina to the limits.

My cousin, Lai, holding up his 2.6kg kalui. This gouramy relished chicken liver.

This was the explanation I used to answer my US based cousin’s inquires. Being a karate exponent (my cousin) I guessed this was the best way to let him know the fighting qualities of our fresh game fishes. Through our e-mails, we had being arguing about the superior fighting qualities of our tomans compared to the muskellunges. Of course being a patriotic Malaysian, I am pro toman. You cannot blame me if I added some brick-breaking and jumping-over-the- roof techniques to the toman’s arsenals. As a result I was under tremendous pressure when he came back for his annual holidays, full of misguided expectations.

The type of weed patches where we fished for kaluis. If you could stay quiet and still, you might be lucky enough to see one or two kaluis propelling themselves almost totally our of the water to grab the water hyacinth flowers.

My heart sank further when we reached my usual fishing spot near Tanjung Tualang. Due to the dry spell, the water level was very low. Being one who was good at cooking up excuses, I conveniently blame the low water level to an act of God (good excuse if we were not to catch any tomans). Luckily for me my cousin, Lai Moon Lam, and his brother-in-law, Dr Chin Sou Fei, caught three tomans of about 2kg between them. My cousin finally ended our arguments by announcing that the tomans equals the northern pikes in fighting qualities, but loses out to the muskies. I kept quiet, as I have not met those fish in unarmed combats before ($$$$).

What surprised us most, during this trip, was a 2.6kg kalui which took my cousin’s liver bait (meant for tomans) and fought him aggressively. After having his trophy photograph taken, he gasped. Wah! Can fight lah. I guess that must have triggered my itch for kalui fishing for I just couldn’t wait for the next Sunday.

Baskaran with our two kaluis.

Baskaran and I were cruising out to the pond even before the sun was up, come Sunday. Easing our boat slowly along the mist-covered, we were wary of hitting underwater structures. The whole scene looked as though taken out of some Dracula films. Reaching our designated spot, we rammed our boat up onto some floating weeds. From then on it was a matter of keeping as quiet as possible. Everything was done in slow motion so as not to spook the ever-wary kaluis. If you could keep perfectly still and quiet, the kaluis could sometime be seen to propel themselves out of the water to grab at some insects or the purple flowers of the water hyacinth.

These were the buah aras that we used. they can be eaten. One of my colleagues from Sarawak told me that they eat it as ulam (salad).

 

Our baits consisted of the evergreen crickets and buah aras. Casting to the far side of the water hyacinth patch, we waited. After almost half an hour of patient waiting, my float suddenly bobbed and went under. Reeling in the slacks, I struck and was rewarded with a bulldozer. That brute went under the weeds and just kept taking line. All I could do was to push my rod tip under water and hoped for the best. Suddenly my line went slack and I reeled back my cut 15lb mono trace. Those tiny teeth sure did their job well.

One of my kaluis. those brakets you see on my sides were my boat rod holders (patent pending).

One hour of fruitless waiting later, we had no choice but to change to another spot. Here, the result was a lot better. We caught two kaluis each. Not big though, just about 1kg to 2kg in sizes. Anyway, it was still fun feeling the steady pull of the fighting kaluis. As the catch was not that good and our itch was not satisfied, we were already planning for the next trip on our way back.

Netting one of my kaluis.

 The next trip saw Keong, Ravi, Baskaran and I heading out in two boats. Keong and I headed to an area where I had seen some kaluis playing around some weeds a week earlier. After securing our boat, I took out my secret weapon- circle hooks. According to my experiences, when buah aras were used as baits, most of the fish caught were lip hooked. But when crickets were used, the hooks would be swallowed deep down. Lip hooking has a lot of advantages. First and foremost, catch and release can be practiced without causing any real problem to the kaluis. Secondly, thinner traces can be used, as the fine teeth of the gouramis cannot reach and cut the monofilament during hard fight. Thicker leaders can be used to overcome this problem, but will reduce the number of bites drastically.

Keong was the first to tangle with a fish. This fish did not fight like a soft stylist. Its fast powerful runs had us puzzled. The mystery was finally solved when a jelawat was finally netted. Yes, they also relished crickets too. When my float shot up and laid flat on the water, I knew a kalui had taken my bait. I just reeled in my line slowly and let the kalui tighten the line (circle hook, remember?). The fish shot to the left and then turned to the right. I felt as though I had a wau bulan at the end of my line.

Keong holding up the jelawat that gobbled his crickets.

Once in a while the reel screamed in protest as the fish took line in powerful surges. In the end I had to cut the trace to release the fish, as the circle was deeply embedded in its gullet. The same thing happened to all the other three kaluis that I caught subsequently. I was really puzzled and distressed. Circle hooks are supposed to pull out of the stomach and lodge at the corner of the fish mouth when it turn and run! Beats me!

Still deep in thought, I was brought back to the present, when my rod started to jerk. A big brute had taken my bait. Big fellow, lah! I gasped to Keong. When it glided the weed edge my heart sank. I could see the two bamboo poles sticking out of the water. True enough, my fish got entangled with the rawai and used it to break loose. The rawais are always a problem to us anglers, but what can we do? The pros have to fill their stomachs too. Conflict of interest, I guessed.

A gust of cold wind snapped us out of our gloom. Looking up, the whole sky was dark with rain cloud swarming everywhere. Keong screamed through his walkie-talkie (he is in the construction business) to Baskaran to flee. Gunning our boat, we skipped over the ponds to find Baskaran and Ravi waiting for us at the rendezvous point. By then it was too late. Strong wind and heavy rain were lashing us from everywhere. As the water level was rather shallow at certain stretches, we were hitting bottom quite often.

My rig for kalui fishing.

Suddenly I notice my outboard was not spurting water through its pump indicator. Cutting out the outboard we had no choice but to drop anchor. In my mind, I was thinking of the money I had to spend for the impeller replacement. Keong was busy bailing to prevent our boat from being filled with water. As visibility was down to a few meters, Baskaran nearly rammed into us. When told about our outboard problem, he suggested that I use a piece of thin wire to unclog the pump indicator. God, was I relieved when I noticed water spurting out again when I cranked my outboard. When we finally reached our landing site, we were like four half-drowned cats.