Don't be Fooled, Here's the Deal on Shimano's Exsence DC !!

[badbuffalo]

I bit hard on the joke, kinda reluctant to get a jdm dc reel with no warranty.I really really want one.

[JonasC]

New user here, great review.

I've been fishing with this reel here in Sweden for about a month and it's replaced my 5500 Ambassadeur as my go-to trout fishing reel. I use only PE mode 1 and 2 depending on wind condition and I cast longer than my heavily tuned ABU. I've tried SP mode at night and it works as advertised although I need to add a little spool tension as I'm mostly casting very aerodynamic lures that hit the water at quite high speeds.

One word of caution however if you ever decide to clean or swap spool bearings: Be very careful when re-assembling the i-DC+ unit. After cleaning my bearings I could no longer change braking mode. I suspected that I had bent the small copper pins on the inside of the brake selector so that it didn't make a good connection to the "circuit" on the other part of the DC unit, but I couldn't find any information online and I didn't take a good enough look when I took it apart to tell if I had broken anything. After a few days of desperately trying to get help from japanese webpages I decided to hold my breath and try to gently bend the pins up (figured if I had already broken it what harm could it do?) and to my great relief it seems to have worked!

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[USA-RET]

New user here, great review.

I've been fishing with this reel here in Sweden for about a month and it's replaced my 5500 Ambassadeur as my go-to trout fishing reel. I use only PE mode 1 and 2 depending on wind condition and I cast longer than my heavily tuned ABU. I've tried SP mode at night and it works as advertised although I need to add a little spool tension as I'm mostly casting very aerodynamic lures that hit the water at quite high speeds.

One word of caution however if you ever decide to clean or swap spool bearings: Be very careful when re-assembling the i-DC+ unit. After cleaning my bearings I could no longer change braking mode. I suspected that I had bent the small copper pins on the inside of the brake selector so that it didn't make a good connection to the "circuit" on the other part of the DC unit, but I couldn't find any information online and I didn't take a good enough look when I took it apart to tell if I had broken anything. After a few days of desperately trying to get help from japanese webpages I decided to hold my breath and try to gently bend the pins up (figured if I had already broken it what harm could it do?) and to my great relief it seems to have worked!

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Welcome to TT.

Thanks for posting this useful bit of information. I have a few DC reels myself and always hold my breath when disassembling for cleaning. Always hoping I didn't upset something that will affect the DC operation. A huge comfort to test afterward and hear that wonderful "Whine".

I'd really like to see this reel real hit the USDM. It would a huge seller at it's price point. IMO

[Afrayedknot]

I would love to see this in the US as well. Of course, it would probably have a different name and a deeper spool (120 yds of 12 lb would be perfect), but that's fine.

[Bootytrain]

New user here, great review.

I've been fishing with this reel here in Sweden for about a month and it's replaced my 5500 Ambassadeur as my go-to trout fishing reel. I use only PE mode 1 and 2 depending on wind condition and I cast longer than my heavily tuned ABU. I've tried SP mode at night and it works as advertised although I need to add a little spool tension as I'm mostly casting very aerodynamic lures that hit the water at quite high speeds.

One word of caution however if you ever decide to clean or swap spool bearings: Be very careful when re-assembling the i-DC+ unit. After cleaning my bearings I could no longer change braking mode. I suspected that I had bent the small copper pins on the inside of the brake selector so that it didn't make a good connection to the "circuit" on the other part of the DC unit, but I couldn't find any information online and I didn't take a good enough look when I took it apart to tell if I had broken anything. After a few days of desperately trying to get help from japanese webpages I decided to hold my breath and try to gently bend the pins up (figured if I had already broken it what harm could it do?) and to my great relief it seems to have worked!

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Thanks for this! I suspect I messed up my scorpion dc swapping out the bearings.. I'm not gonna touch the Essence.

[tonyex]

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It took me a while finding you post after I flushed the bearings of my Exsence some time ago, but I remembered I read it here @TT, so at the end I found it.
Flushing the bearings of this reel was a scary moment, but not so scary as I expected. Thx for sharing you experience!

BR //T

[Martin Lo]

Nice review. The only characteristic that I noticed is that the reel isn't all that special with lighter weight lures, but excels at 1/2 ounce and up...your mileage may vary.

Yeah, I agree with this but I may be biased as I use it for Ikas mostly. I didn't have a problem with 4 inch worms, though. Depends what rod it's on, etc. It definitely isn't a finesse reel but I think it's an outstanding general purpose reel. Not sure of much better values out there.

Great skipping reel for those of us who aren't great at it.

What setting do you for skipping? Max?

Depending on how lazy I am, I generally set it to SP and relatively tight cast control. I am not an expert skipper and I fish from a deep V so I am at a slightly higher angle and have less room to skip it than I am when I fish off of a bass boat, so I don't go nuts with it...you can still get some overrun regardless of the DC and the SP mode with a bad skip. How about you and others?

F is the strongest braking of all the modes. More than even MAX.
SP is great as the brakes turns on at the beginning and at the end of the cast with the audible whine in the seconds preceeding touchdown