I often hear and see fishermen talking about line backing on their reels. I think this refers to using some old line to partialy fill their reels then putting new line on after that. My questions are How much of the reel should be old line & how much should be new fresh line. Also what type line should be used for backing. Do you do this on both open faced spinning reels as well as bait casting ones. Any help will be appreciated as I am about to restring several reels.

The reason for backing is to take up space on the reel. Putting over 150 yards of expensive braid or fluoro on a reel can get expensive and usually only the first 75 yards or so ever see the water. The first time is tricky as you pretty much need to guess how much backing to put or leave to get to your desired amount of new line. If you have multiple spools for your reel, this is a bit easier as you can load one spool backwards (put on the new line, then tie in the backing and fill the spool) then transfer it to another spool. Once you have the first one done, you kind of get an "eye" for how much backing. I normally spool about 75-100 yards of new line. This works for both spinning and baitcasting reels. Spincast reels normally don't hold enough line to matter and normally are spooled with mono anyway. If you are working on a new reel, the "house "brand mono fromBPS or Cabelas works fine and is dirt cheap.

Well said PG...I can't even find anything to add!

Line backing is also a consideration when small diameter lines are used. For example, a medium sized spinning reel mayl take like 300 yards of 4# mono. However it takes a rather long time to spool up that many yardage of line and it's a waste of lines that will never get used. So spool it up with some line backing so you should only need like about 100 yards of line on average. That will mean a guesstimate of line backing about 2/3 filled on spool. If it's going to be 6# mono that will fill about 200 yards, then maybe prefill about 1/2 full of line backing.

This is somewhat new to me and have been reading more and more about line backing. Pegsguy gave a nice how to but why take up space on a reel? That is the part I am confused about.

Posted By gonzales0219 on 13 Mar 2012 03:11 PM
This is somewhat new to me and have been reading more and more about line backing. Pegsguy gave a nice how to but why take up space on a reel? That is the part I am confused about.

Good question gonzales...let me see if I can answer this and make sense. Some reels have a large spool capacity, which would get expensive when spooling with braid. Say the spool took 300yds. of 8lb. mono. While this would not be costly with mono, with 20lb. braid(the dia. equivalent) it could get pricey. The solution is spool on 200yds. of mono...then 100yds. of braid...much more cost effective. If you were to just put on the 100yds. of braid, without the mono backing, it would not fill the spool, and your casting distance would suffer. Now we are talking average freshwater fishing, not tuna fishing, where a fish will peel off over 100yds. of line. In a case like that...fishermen just fill the whole spool with braid.
                                                                           

My spinning set up for live bait rigging does not need line backing, since I don't require filling the spool up when a half filled spool will get the job done. However for constant casting and retrieving of artificial lures, the system works much better with the spool line filled to the optimal performance specs.

Good point Bob...another "exception to the rule" is baitcasting reels with large spools. You can get away with half a spool here too.( as long as you're not fishing for species that take long runs) The only drawback is reduced speed.

Thanks mo65 and Slipperybob, good explanations. I will keep that in mind next time, try it out and see if I can tell the difference. Much appreciated!

A good example of line filling is the new nanofil line which is 20.00 aspool only 150 yds so areel thats 200 yds would be 40.00 dolars and would not get used i put 100 yards on one reel and fifty on another for pan fish .as for braid you cant tie it to the spool as it will slip so you 1/2 fill with cheap mono

Something else to keep in mind is that reel spools are rated for capacity using mono in most cases. A reel rated for 200 yds capacity would actually hold more like 300+ yards of a line like Nanofil. Some of the newer spinning designs now come with a mono spool and a low capacity braid spool.