why would anyone bother with a baitcasting reel for freshwater ?

Carlos wrote:
Accuracy and the ability to control the entry of a bait into the water.

Sometime watch, really watch guys on tv casting. Or even better, go to
a wintertime fishing show where a big name angler is tossing a jig into
a cup 50-80 feet away and never missing. Doing it while not making a
lot of noise. Just laying it in there.

Baitcasters are far more useful, and accurate than you give them credit
for. They take practice. Anything worthwhile does.

Carlos


let me elaborate:

I've been fishing for 37 years now, and to say a baitcaster is more
accurate, is very misleading- and downright incorrect. I can put 6
pound test on an open face and cast 200 feet with ease. And I can put
10 pound test on it and haul in huge bass. And I've fished small
streams and creeks with open faced spinning reels, that require far
more precision than any baitcaster can give- and would leave a
baitcasting reel in a birdsnest tangle.

The only useful purpose I can see for a baitcaster, is fishing from a
boat on large lakes and ocean, where the bait it tossed a few feet from
the boat, and then trolled- and the fish are huge over 15 pounds.

Calling that 1800's technology a "baitcaster" is somewhat of an
oxymoron- it's a winch designed to haul up heavy fish- and a winch gets
tangled when it spins backwards fast. The makers of those reals need
to improve them a bit, to eliminate backlash. They don't cast bait for
crap ! The fisherman would be better off attaching the heavy lure or
bait, and throwing it with his pitching arm where he wants it, then
using the reel to retrieve the fish. And I say that only half kidding,
because he'd have no backlash tangles then.