I have a Mitchell 300 reel that I've had stored away for years and decided to clean it up and go fishing with it to relive the fishing I did with it in my youth.
I took it apart and cleaned all of the old grease out of it, re-lubed it and put it back together.
After respooling the line on to it I noticed that the line is not laying symmetrical. There is more on the bottom of the spool.
See attached picture.
How do I resolve this?
Thank you for any suggestions.
Mitchell 300 Line lay on spool-1.jpg
Welcome aboard!
First, looks like there is about 35 yards too much mono line on the spool.
The line lay issue could be due to the spool not fully locked into place, an extra spacer washer under the spool, the wrong sized spacer washer, or a slightly tweaked/bent bail assembly.
Best, Fred
Thanks for your input Foakes.
I will check your suggestions and see how it goes.
When I was spooling the line on, I was just watching the top of the spool to achieve the 1/16"-1/8" distance to the edge. Only after I was done I saw how much was on the bottom.
I also took the spool off to see if there was any obstruction to the fitting of the axle gear to the spool and it seems to be penetrating correctly such that it takes the pushing of the button on top of the spool to release the spool to take it off.
Thank you again. I'll post back on what I found or did.
Hello foakes,
Well, after getting over that darn flu, I checked for the things that you mentioned on my Garcia Mitchell 300.
I had no spacer under the spool but saw that maybe the spring in the spool that engages the plastic gear was misaligned and holding the spool too high so I dinked with it and re-spooled the line.
Same issue, no change.
I looked at the bail and when the spool is in it's highest position and I flip up the bail it comes pretty close to the spool (almost touching) on the right side, so the Bail Wire may be bent like you suggested.
I'm going to go back and see if I can straighten it out. I did see a YouTube video where the guy bent the Bail Wire to re-align it.
I'm going to give that a try and then unspool and re-spool the line (again!) and see how that works.
I'll post back with my results.
Thanks again for your input.
Hope you're feeling a little better!
I wouldn't know exactly what is wrong unless it is on the bench.
Might be a bent bail, or a rubber stop missing, or wrong washers, or a spool not setting all of the way down.
If you would like me to fix it for you, N/C, even if it needs parts.
Just shipping to and from. I have worked on thousands of these.
Best, Fred
Kind of instristing . Was the line lay alright with the old line ? Same test line / diameter line ?
Some easy thing to check is no shims stuck under the spool . Bail arm 90 degrees.
IF that is all good , do you have this gear train ?
Now this is going to sound silly , but put the stroke midway # 6 picture .
Mark the gear ,look at the 7 th picture see where I removed a little grease at the bottom of the gear . Pick the gear up and turn it 180 degrees and drop it in , you can turn the gear with your finger to make sure you are still in time .
It is hard to see , but the slide teeth are about 10 to 12 thousands difference from top to bottom row . Try it and respool the line to see the difference .
Well, my bail wire was definitely bent so I messed around with it and did some bending to get it where I think it should be.
So, once again I took the line off and respooled it to see the results.
Same thing. Really no change.
I expected to see some change from all the tweaking I did, but no go.
My next step (maybe tomorrow) is to check what oldmanjoe suggested about flipping the gear 180 degrees and then.....yes! respool again! (GRIN)
Btw, thank you oldmanjoe for your input on this.
:d
Long time Mitchell fan & user here. Have you tried a different spool to see if the problem is corrected?
Kim
@Piscesman2 -- Welcome back -- your contributions are always nice to have.
Where have you been? Probably the FB MRM site, I recon.
Sad to see the old MRM website finally expire. The new MRM website doesn't looks like it's going anywhere.
Send me a private message if you would like to continue to chat and catch up.
Well, today I flipped the gear 180 degrees like oldmanjoe described, then respooled the line and had the same issue. No change.
I do not have another spool to try like was suggested.
So, my next step is to replaced the bail since I did find it tweaked and bent somewhat. Perhaps the reel got dropped some time ago.
I'm spending a lot of time on this reel that I see on Ebay for $25.00 or so. A new bail is close to that price also.
Hmmm,....not sure if I want to continue on this. It was a thought to relive my fishing as a youth with that reel but I have several rod/reel setups that I use and are so much better than that Mitchell 300.
Throwing money at that reel just to use it once or twice or....is what I'm pondering now.
Thank you all for your input and patience on this issue.
If you want to post a photo of the reel, to confirm the type of bail, and the reel version —- I could send you a new bail plus another spool at no charge.
Best, Fred
Fred,
That is very generous of you. Thank you.
But, I'd want to compensate you for the shipping and parts.
What I've decided to do is use the reel as is, catch a few fish with it, then retire it to a shelf in my garage.
Like I mentioned before, it was just a thought to relive my youth with that reel but not always use it.
Reels have come a long way since then so I'll continue using my "modern" reels.
Many thanks to you and others that contributed to this thread.