There is only one person in this world who loves to fish like I do and it is my wife. She got me turned on to fishing with plastic lizards and we have never been to our 17-acre (in non-drought years) pond without landing a few LMB.

We fish too long and get to the pier at dark. The other night we couldn't see and got her line all tangled up and had to cut it to get loose.

She has a favorite reel-a Shakespeare Synergy Classic with 10-pound line. When we cut the line it left about 10' on the spool.

Now we can't get the front off of the reel to save our necks. Does anyone know how to replace the line on one of these kinds of reels.

By the way, one of the Christmas presents I gave my wife was a brand new tackle box with a new reel inside and off-set hooks with a couple of packs of her favorite colored lizards. She is still on Cloud 9 and we are heading out today to try our luck again.

Help! How can we get into the reel to replace the line?

Do you have to get inside? IF the residual 10' of line still protrudes, why not tie your new line on to the stub and crank it on to the spool? I have done partial re-lining on spinning reels like this; I donn't see why it wouldn't work on any reel type as well.

Observe proper line twist and use a suitable knot, of course.

Are you kidding . . . and have a legitimate excuse why "Big Jake" got away? How would you feel to have a big lunker up to your boat and have him spit in your eye as he is saying good bye with all but 10' of your line? Ha!

Open the bail and remove the last ten feet of line. Then tie on your new line of choice onto the empty spool, close the bail, and fill to 1/8 of an inch of the spool lip. A trick i learned to get rid of initial line twist when spooling up is to slowly let out your line with nothing on the end while moving along in your boat. Then the water tension on the line will work out the twist. Slowly reel the line back in and tie on your lizard and start fishing. Good luck.

That's the problem. I can't get the cover off the reel to put line on the spool. There is no release button and no way to twist it off. There has to be a way to get into it. My next try will include getting a phillips head screw driver and trying to get in through the back side.

Chandler, I'm not sure I understand what your problem is about the reel.

Why do you have to get the cover off to put new line on the spool. Can't you just tie the line onto the existing spool and then get the line on by cranking the reel handle?

A blood knot will work well for tying to the existing line.

You could also go "google" synergy classic reel, or contact Shakespere about how to get the cover off so you can respool.

If it were me I would go spend some money and buy a Shimano Curado baitcaster and put it on a Falcon Silver series FC6 rod (6-1/2 to 7ft). That is a great combo for fishing soft plastics like lizards.

That reel came in either steel or alloy construction and you may have a dissimilar metals problem, might try a break free solution, mine is an alloy model and the cone screws off. It did corrode once and WD 40 worked into the threads enough to unscrew it.

Chandler, I rarely remove all of my line down to the spool. All of my reels have more line capacity than I really need so I just tie the new stuff on and keep going. I can't imagine catching anything big enough to take all but the last 10 ft. of line unless I was salt water fishing.

Go to Mikesreelrepair.com and post your question. Lots of reel repair guys and collectors post there. They have schematics of most reels that may help you.

BTW, I contacted Shakespeare "Customer Service" a couple of years ago to complain about a poorly designed spinning reel that I bought at Wal Mart. I got a ho-hum response and tossed it in the trash. I no longer use their product. Like a lot of other companies, many reel companies have offshored their manufacturing to save a couple of pennies per unit at the cost of their reputation. Even Abu Garcia has reels made in China instead of Sweden. Reel repair pros will tell you that an awful lot of reels are now throwaways and aren't worth messing with. I buy and repair old Ambassadeurs from yard sales to pass down to my Grandsons. My feeling is that someday all reels will be made of Reynolds Wrap and I want them to understand qualty. Due to the price of parts, I can usually buy what I consider a temporary reel cheaper than I can repair a good one.

CAVEAT EMPTOR

Dave

Thanks for the info. You are right, most of the reels today are simply throw-a-ways. The wife said that hers was her favorite reel so I guess I will trying tieing it on with some fresh line.

My wife has several old castig reels that she bought in yard sales and said she would sell them online if she could only get a good photo of them. It's funny what treasures one can find in other folks' "junk" sales.

Isn't Reynolds Wrap aluminum, a metal? That might be too optimistic. Plastic wrap would be cheaper.

You're right Theo, I'm giving them too much credit.