Viking Lars | Saturday, 9 March 2024
That’s over 1000 meters - of backing! Backing!!! For the non-metric - that over 3000 feet of backing. That’s a lot of backing. My left arm hurts and I was almost about to say that I’ll be happy if I never see another foot of backing again, but that is of course not true.
Although I’ve said many times that I actually enjoy maintaining my gear, whenever it needs it, I genuinely dislike spooling backing. One thing is putting backing on a new reel, but another is changing backing. I thought that was the worst. But yesterday I pulled myself together to do something I’ve been meaning to do for a couple of years.
I have somehow lost overview over the backing on my salmon reels and backing on salmon reels is quite essential. At some point, you will get long runs. I knew that it was all good as far as breaking strain, but I was really unsure of how many meters were on the different reels.
For early season, where there’s a real chance for a really big fish in high water, there’s also a chance (risk?) for potentially really long runs. So plenty of backing on the big reels is just important. And I just wanted to know how much on which reels.
I don’t happen to have a professional spooling station, so it was a matter of preparing for some tedious, manual labour with some coffee and a pod cast (on early 11th century medieval English church architecture, if you wonder).
I dug out the old line winder, which I never use these days. I use the Scientific Anglers Regulator Spool, which I think is close to brilliant (https://scientificanglers.com/product/regulator-spool/). It would have been more or less useless in this case. I measured how many meters 10 windings took, then I tied on the backing, spun the line winder and counted each turn and did the math.
Rolling it off didn’t take long, neither did the math and jotting it down in the notebook. But spooling it back onto the reels - man!
I spooled a total of over 1 kilometer of backing (possibly even a lot more). Since it’s on salmon reels it even needed to be spooled onto under a little tension to prevent windings from digging in, when fish run on the brake. My biggest reels for my 15’ rod had over 300m of backing (that’s roughly 900 feet). My left arm is still numb.
But now I know and I noted it at first, but I decided to make a spread sheet instead. My memory works in mysterious ways and I’ll probably never have to look it up again, but if I forget, it’s on file. I think I’ll create the total overview and go through the trout reels and the sea trout reels as well.
I must really dislike myself!
Have a great weekend!
Lars
If anybody knows of a proper quality line winder, please let me know. The ones I've had have been really dinky.