Lexa 300 HD - Quick look inside & review

[the rockfish ninja]

Well, I finally invested in a good lure plugging reel, the Daiwa Lexa 300HD 8:1 gear ratio, and might I say from an initial performance evaluation it is really a sweet unit. On top of that, as we all know the first time you take out a new reel you get skunked , but not this baby , first-time out a lingcod and four Rockfish. Maybe that's a good omen .

So after a few trips to the jetty I decided to look under the hood, dry her out, clean out any salt crystals, and do a quick spot lube. Here's what she looks like.



Side plate off,  (the mag control is solid although the magnets are a bit strong, I'm throwing 3/4 oz lures and keep it dialed at 1 or 2. the dial goes up to 10 but I've never gone past three.)


A look at the housing.


Here's a close-up of the spool, I didn't take the shaft or bearings out,  (I'll save that for a future tutorial when I break the whole thing down.)


The level wind is smooth as silk so far, from what I read Daiwa upgraded a lot of parts to stainless steel from the previous Lexa models.



Ya gotta love the funkycool speed knob, I swap out all my reels to jigging knobs, they just feel so much more functional than any other type of knob to me.


Although the magnets in this reel are a little heavy-handed (I'll just keep it dialed down low or free spool) mostly all the other aspects of this reel meet or exceed my expectations. The drag is strong and smooth, the star control adjusts easily with clicks, it casts with ease, and the feature that really stands out is the 8 to 1 gear ratio. For what I'm using this for (dragging lures slowly over the rocks and trying not to get snagged) it not only helps me keep out of snags by reeling up quickly, it also keeps my quarry (Rockfish, lingcod, Cabezon) from biting my lure and making a b-line for the little crevice he darted out of. It has performed stellar for these purposes, I'm very happy with it.

In the future I will post a more extensive breakdown on this reel.

[steelfish]

as we all know the first time you take out a new reel you get skunked

LOL true on that buddy, first time I took my fathom 40LD2 out it only got 2 triggerfish, and that was only cuz I switched the inshore rod/reel combo I was using to get the tigers for the MH jigging rod/fathom just to make it get a fish that day, it was on the last stop of the fishing day.

anyway, nice pictures and looks of the lexa 300HD, I have the 1st gen model, same size, so far so good, I use it only on inshore fisheries so, no big fishes on it but pretty of fun and pretty light with the quantum gold bluerunner inshore