General rod, reel, and line care/maintenance

[TedderX]

I figure the rod pretty much takes care of itself unless you bust an eye off.

Reel-  How often should you take it apart and clean, oil, and grease it?  Once a year?  Once a week?  I have an Abu Garcia Revo SX.

Line- How often should you change your line?  Is there a way to tell when it's time?  I'm strictly using monofilament.

Scenario I had: I fished three-four hours a day for about three weeks. After about a week of not fishing, I went today.  I noticed the "top" layer of line on my spool was fairly dark in color (not your typical clear/see through).  I assume this was the amount of line I had been using and was actually in the water.  Until several casts, and it getting wet again, it had ALOT of memory in it.  It also was somewhat stiffer.  I had several backlashes because of this.  Once decently wet, it seemed to perform normally again.  Should I just cut this section of line off and use what's underneath?  Or is it ok to use?

[avidone1]

I like to keep my reels clean at all times.  I'll put a drop of oil on the bearings every couple of times out.  I find that keeps them pretty much in good condition.  I don't take my reels apart but send them to be serviced when I detect some roughness, or they just haven't been serviced in a few years.

I use braid with Berkley big game as a leader.  I change the leader often but only change out the braid when it starts looking really sorry

[BobP]

 Doing a tear down/clean/relube once a year is considered sufficient by most guys.    But you should put a drop of oil in the spool bearings and in the levelwind gear several times during the fishing season.  Mono is damaged by water absorption and by exposure to UV light.  How often you change it is up to you but if it was discolored and getting lots of spool memory, I'd strip it off and put on all new line.  It just isn't that expensive so why fight the spool memory and maybe break off a good fish just to save a buck?  You don't need to strip it all off the reel, 150 ft or so is all you will be using until it's time to strip it off again.