"duty-honor-country" wrote in message
ups.com...
question- considering the incessant amount of tangles and backlashes
with ANY bait casting reel, and the fact your thumb must ride the spool
at all times to (try to) prevent it- why would anyone bother even using
a bait casting reel for fresh water fishing ? I can see the cranking
advantage to a bait caster, for hauling in huge fish, and dragging
lures through weeds, etc.. But in my actual experience, the bait
casters can't cast as far, and not as accurately, as a cheap open face
spinning reel or even a spincasting reel.

Short answer: They do work, if you learn how to use them. Open-faced
spinning real more accurate than baitcasters? Not in the hands of an
experinced baitcaster user. I bet you don't sit a 5 gallon pale out in the
yard and practice casting to it at all, with any reel, do you? If not, you
are not the target market for baitcasters. Your methods are too casual, you
don't want to practice you just want to fish. Be that the case, then sure,
stick with spinning reels and closed spinning reels like the Zebco 33.

I live and die by the baitcaster, they outnumber the spinning reels on my
boat 6-2. And I keep those 2 spinning reels on there for 2-3 purposes:
Certain extra-light weight baits that I use, very windy conditions, and for
times when non-experienced anglers are going to be on-board and in need of
fishing rods.


And your technique needs some help. You aren't required to keep your thumb
on the spool all the time. You won't get any distance with that much
friction on the spool. The key to casting a baitcaster, consistently and
without hassle IMO, is your casting technique. That's what ultimately sets
and controls the bait's speed, which is what is the root of most overruns.
Too much bait speed at the get-go. Think of it in gun-like terms, you don't
necessarily want a really high muzzle velocity, but you do want a nice
consistent down-range velocity after the launch. A lot of this comes from
the casting wrist & arm, not the casting thumb.


When I go fishing, I want to fish, not untangle the reel ever 4th cast.

Again, it takes practice. You get a backlash every 4 casts, I get one every
4-5 trips, usually when I tried to skip a bait under a distant dock and hit
the dock by mistake. Of course, I have fished baitcasters since I was 8-9
years old (and am currently pushing 40), and I tune mine up each season, and
spend hours in the yard casting to small pales, at different distances, and
don't stop "tuning" my reels until I can use the bait I want, and hit the
pales dead center, 9 out of every 10 casts, using whatever cast I want to
practice: overhead, sidearm (fore and backhand), flipping and pitching.

Are the 5-ball bearing bait casters so much better they don't tangle,
over a single-ball bearing bait caster ? Common sense tells me no.

Experience tells me yes. You have to tune a baitcaster to your casting
habits (do you wrist or arm cast? what are your magnet settings, reel/spool
tension, line type and weight?), and extra bearings in a baitcaster make it
more smooth, easier to tune, and way easier to cast accurately once you have
it tuned to your tendencies, bait choices, and weather conditions.


These bait casters seem at best something to use, to toss bait a few
feet from the boat, then troll in the ocean or large lakes for huge
fish- NOT for casting with precision and distance. I can cast hundreds
of feet with my spinning reel- and hardly 100 feet with a bait caster
with a lug nut attached for weight.

This tells me that you haven't given a baitcaster a fair chance. I
personally, don't tune my baitcasters with lug nuts. And IMO, not many
freshwater sized baitcasters are even setup for the 2-4 ounces that a
typical lug nut surely weighs. Penn Senator salt water baitcasters? Maybe. I
have fished 32 oz Mojos off those for striped bass....


I'm getting the notion the reel industry is doing a lot of bs-ing to
sell bait casters.


No, they market harder to use and control reels to fisherman that want the
most accuracy that they can achieve with them with a little practice.

Do you golf at all? How well do you golf without practicing with your
current clubs? Fishing is the same way when it comes to equipment above the
entry level stuff. Based on your post, I'd say if you DO golf, that you do
it with off-the-shelf equipment, that wasn't "fitted" to you and you wonder
why you can't get rid of that slice, right? Go get your clubs bent to fit
your height and stance and arm length and I promise you'll shave 5 strokes
off your next round.....Put in some practice with a baitcaster - and get it
tuned to your style - and you'll wonder how you ever lived without them.

skeptic bordering on cynic...