DukenBass

Do I just contact Abu Garcia from they're web site to send it in to be repaired or replaced? I ordered this from tackle warehouse about 4 or 5 months ago and I doubt I have any documents or receipts showing when I purchased this, I have a bad habit of not keeping up with receipts.

I live in north GA, its been unusually cold lately until the past week, Only thing I can catch anything on right now is Red Eye Shad lipless crank baits.

So I recently purchased a Abu Orra Winch for crank baits. When I took it out the first time I was casting away trying to cover a lot of water, well on one particular cast as soon as I went to cast the thumb button popped up mid cast I guess and it made a horrible grinding sound which stopped the bait immediately from going any further. The best description of the sound would almost be like grinding gears in a transmission. So after it did that I reeled it in and checked it out and did not see anything out of the norm, so I kept fishing. After that it seemed like when I reeled in I could feel a slight gritty feeling on a certain point of the handle turn. I just accepted it and hoped it was a error on my part that I must have done something stupid on that certain cast that grinded when the thumb button popped up. Well, long story short I have went out fishing several times since that mishap and at least one or two times a trip it has done it again, and each time it has happens it is making my reel seem more and more gritty when I reel in. FYI, I am familiar with bait casters, I have a few of them and never had this problem. I tried searching to see if anybody else had this problem and found nothing. Anybody got any input on this?