Your reel won’t turn? Here are some ways you can fix a broken reel that won’t crank. Okay, so this is going to be an article on how to fix a casting reel. This is the reel with the button that most kids use nowadays.
It’s also the reel that tends to crank every now and then. Higher-end baitcasting reels are easy to fix, and you will find a lot of articles online and even videos. But the lower end ones are the real pain to deal with.
That being said, I’m going to show you how I fix a reel that does not grab when you wanted to and not release when you wanted to. First of all, I will identify the problem that I was having.
This is to save your time because you might not have the same problem as me. I was having a problem where my casting reel won’t reel in, or the button would not release the tension on the string.
Basically, the mechanism on my reel did not know when it was supposed to allow the string to come out, or it was supposed to be actually allowing the reel to reel it in.
In the following section, I’m going to be telling you all about problems I’ve had with bait casters. If you’ve ever had a bait caster that won’t take up line no matter what you do, stick with me, I’ll tell you all about it.
Common Problems With Baitcasting Reels
As a new angler, I started looking at $50 reels and came across a couple of different ones. I had a problem last time I was fishing.
I was casting using a pretty lightweight lure, and when I was doing that, all of a sudden, I had a problem where no matter what I did with my drag adjustments, I couldn’t get it to take up the line.
Fixing A Fishing Reel That Won’t Reel In
If you have the same problem as mine, continue reading. So, what I determined was, the way the reel works isn’t where the problem is. It’s actually the button that is not pressed in.
There is a knob at the front that sticks out. The purpose of the knob is that it catches the string automatically when the reel starts spinning. When you push the button on the back of the reel, you will see that the knob goes in.
This allows the string to come out of the reel easily. Now, when you wind it again, you will hear a click, and the knob comes back up. Let me show you what I had to do to fix my reel.
Step 1
First, take the reel apart. I won’t go over the details here because it’s fairly easy to do so, and you can find a bunch of tutorials online. So, what you have to do is pull the top piece off.
Once the metal plate is pulled off from the top of the reel, this is where the fun part begins. Now, if you want a short guide, simply hold the reel, and unscrew the top plate.
Step 2
Have a look at the inside of the plate just to figure out how this works. With your current reel, you will notice that you don’t have any spool tension. It doesn’t matter what drag adjustments you make; the reel won’t do anything.
There will be no pressure whatsoever. Even if you max out the spool tensioner, there won’t be any tension.
Sometimes you can fix it randomly, and the common solution will just be the line tension. All you have to do is properly adjust the spool tensioner on the side, and that will solve your issue.
Step 3
Notice the small piece at the center of the metal spool? This piece gets pushed in, pushing out the knob when it goes down over a bumped area. So, what happens is if this little nub is not coming out, you need to either just oil it, or figure out what’s causing the problem.
Try pushing the knob and check if it goes in and out easily without you having to direct it in any way just by pushing it. If it has come off kilter and it’s in a position where it’s not going through the hole, pull the pin out by pushing it all the way in.
Now get the pin out of there. After you have got the pin completely outside of the mechanism, you take the little channel that goes through the center and bend it slightly.
Once you have pulled the pin, all you have left is the mechanism. So basically, what you do is if the pin is not directing through the hole properly, then you go ahead and pull this out and use a plyer to bend it.
Step 4
Other times, especially when you’re using a really lightweight lure, the drag adjustment, which will be on the side of your reel, will apply more pressure to your drag. You can try adjusting it up or down.
If you are running heavier braid, you especially don’t want it to be too heavy of a drag because you will be flipping it around. Now, what you want to do here is that take the tensioner for your drag adjustment, and you are going to crank it back as far as you can.
I mean you’re almost afraid you’re going to break it, and then you’re going to adjust it back the other way. And that’s going to adjust that. Now adjust it back the other way.
Now, you will hear some popping sound. Whatever it is popping, this will surely fix the reel. It works like magic.
Final Words
Fishing is a popular pastime for many reasons. To be a skilled fisherman you have to know how to maintain your fishing gear like how to oil a fishing reel and how to solve the common problems of fishing equipment like how to get fishing line out of reel the easy way.
In this article, we have focused on a very common problem and its solution that you must know if you love to go for fishing very often. Now, there are other ways of fixing a reel that won’t reel in. However, if you have tried almost all of them and still didn’t find a solution, take it to the dealer and let them have a look at it.
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