The Line Switch That Fixed My Backlash Problem

I have been fishing Ohio water for about 45 years, and I will tell you straight: I lost more lures to backlash than I ever lost to a fish. A bad bird's nest on a baitcaster used to cost me ten minutes of picking line with a thumbnail, and sometimes the whole spool went in the trash. My grandson Caleb watched me do it twice one morning on Caesar Creek Lake, and he asked why I did not just fish a spinning rod like everybody else. I did not have a good answer. What I had was a habit.

The fix was not a new reel. It was not a new rod, and it was not me suddenly learning to use my thumb. It was the line. I switched to Berkley Trilene XL monofilament, and the tangles did not disappear overnight, but they got rare enough that a bad cast stopped being something I dreaded. This is the story of that switch, and what I would tell you if we were sitting at my kitchen table.

The morning I remember best was in late June. I had a 14-foot jon boat and a small trolling motor, and I was working a point on the Great Miami River where the current swings in close. First cast of the day, I reached back and let the bait go a little too hard. The spool overran, and by the time I stopped it, I was looking at a nest the size of a walnut. I sat down, got out my thumbnail, and picked at it for a while. Caleb caught two bluegill off the back of the boat while I was still untangling.

That night I sat at the kitchen table with the spool in my hand and thought about what was actually wrong. The reel was a decent one. The rod was fine. The problem was that I was asking a stiff, wiry line to lie flat on a spool that was turning faster than my thumb could keep up. Stiff line does not want to lie flat. It wants to spring off in coils. When it springs off in coils and the spool is still turning, you get a backlash.

I had heard the name Berkley Trilene XL for years, mostly from older guys at the boat ramp who did not talk about fishing in terms of technique. They just said it cast easy and it did not let them down. So I spooled up a 330-yard spool of the 6-lb test, 0.22 millimeter diameter, and took it to a farm pond outside Dayton.

The first thing I noticed was that the line came off the spool in long, even loops instead of springy coils. That is the whole difference between a good morning and a picking session.

I am not going to tell you the line made me a better caster. I still had to learn to slow down and use my thumb. But the Trilene XL made the punishment smaller. When I did overrun it, the line gave instead of kinking into a hard knot. A soft backlash picks out in a couple of minutes. A hard one does not pick out at all. That alone changed how often I was willing to throw a baitcaster, which changed the water I could fish, which changed the kind of day I had on the boat.

I have also learned to trust it when it is wet. The specs say it keeps its durability when submerged, and I have had no reason to doubt that. I have pulled channel catfish out of current, dragged a crankbait through timber on Caesar Creek, and let a largemouth run under the boat, and I cannot remember the last time the line broke when it should not have. The breaking strength is 6 pounds, and that is honest. I have caught bigger fish on it than I have any right to claim, but I have also lost a few, and I do not blame the line for those.

Caleb has my old spinning rod now, and I still keep a spinning outfit in the boat for him. But the baitcaster is mine again, and it is the rod I reach for first. I have Berkley Trilene XL on three reels, and the only time I picked a backlash out of the last one was when I tried to skip a jig under a dock and bounced it off a post. That one was my fault, and the line still came out clean.

What I'd Tell You If We Were Sitting at My Kitchen Table

Here is what I would say. If you are fighting backlash on a baitcaster, do not buy a new reel first. Buy a spool of Berkley Trilene XL and put it on the reel you already have. It is a cheap experiment, and it will tell you in one afternoon whether the line was the problem or your thumb was. Most of the time, it is a little of both, and the line is the half you can fix with a spool.

I would also tell you not to overspool. Leave about an eighth of an inch of the spool lip showing. Fill the reel to the top and you are asking for trouble no matter what line you use. And when you do get a nest, do not reach for your knife. Reach for your thumbnail, work the outside of the tangle first, and be patient. The line will give if you let it.

One more thing, and this is the part I wish somebody had told me forty years ago. A backlash is not a moral failure. It is information. The line is telling you that you are casting harder than the setup can handle. Listen to it, slow down, and fix the setup. You will catch more fish, and you will enjoy the days you do not catch any, which matters more than you think when you are 61 and still climbing in and out of a 14-foot jon boat.