Light Baitcasting Rig Thoughts.

[Bazoo]

I've always thought of baitcasting gear as for 1/4 oz on the lightest and preferably 3/8 oz and larger. 10 pound line or larger, normally 12 or 14. However, I've started to see that I can cast lighter lures, when using a lighter rod and lighter line.

 

I have a cheap Zebco spincast rod made of fiberglass, and I put my Black Max on it. I've been using it a while, and I love the way the rod loads up, especially with lighter lures. Well, I extended grip about 4 inches and now it's got a great balance and good support when reeling. I can cast a weightless fluke or lizard with it. Today I used a size 3 split shot and a weightless Zoom Fat Albert Grub. I'm casting just as far as I would with my normal spinning rig. This was with 10 pound Big Game. I respooled earlier with 8 pound Big Game, and gave a few test casts in the yard, NICE!

 

For some reason, it's intriguing to me. Anyone else experiment with light baitcasting gear? Since I've just cobbled together something I had that is working, what does everyone else recommend if I were going to buy a rod/reel/line just for this?

[T-Billy]

Search BFS.

[bulldog1935]

The best I've ever fished are Abu Garcia salt all-range baitfinesse rods.  6'6" Xrossfield Baitfinesse to 7+' (8+' if you have a need to go there - beyond 130').  The 6'6" to 7'3" rods plug into bass niches very well.  

Ask @softwateronly - he recently bought Abu Prototype Kurodai baitfinesse and has been having a blast with it.  

These will fish 1/16 oz with no problem - casts 2 g well beyond 100' if your reel is set up properly.  

 

This lure-weight range of 1/16 to 5/8 oz is typical on the best all-range BFS rods.  

These also aren't for panfish - these rods have the backbone to stop a big fish that's trying to run wide under your kayak. 

While most people on BR take the approach of buying a packaged off-the-shelf BFS reel, you can go as crazy as you want with bench reels - this '77 mid-frame Ambassadeur will cast 3 g to 150'

[Bazoo]

Thanks, I was clueless on BFS. I just read an article on it.

 

 

Is there a name for the light casting gear that isn't into the BFS range? 

14 minutes ago, bulldog1935 said:

The best I've ever fished are Abu Garcia salt all-range baitfinesse rods.  6'6" Xrossfield Baitfinesse to 7+' (8+' if you have a need to go there - beyond 130').  The 6'6" to 7'3" rods plug into bass niches very well.  

Ask @softwateronly - he recently bought Abu Prototype Kurodai baitfinesse and has been having a blast with it.  

These will fish 1/16 oz with no problem - casts 2 g well beyond 100' if your reel is set up properly.  

 

These also aren't for panfish - these rods have the backbone to stop a big fish that's trying to run wide under your kayak. . 

What kind of fish is that? some type of carp?

[bulldog1935]

If you want to tackle improving your Black Max for small-diameter lines and light lures, you should be able to find a shallow, lightweight BFS spool on Express website or ebay.  

Also don't rule out the glass rod.  Most of my River Kayak rods are modern Japanese glass, which has great action for fishing close and skip-casting.  

(the MH frogger on top is graphite)

After the spool swap, you can gain another 10+% by swapping your shielded spool bearings for low-mass/inertia BFS bearings.  

@Bazoo that's redfish - 

I mostly kayak inshore, and shore fish long BFS tackle.  Especially the skinny expanse on the TX coast (15,000 sq-mi less than 2' deep), we fish lighter tackle than most bass fishermen.  

I actually began this with surf tackle, to let me cast the latest generation of braid (30-lb breaking strength) to extreme distance.  

The wide reel throws 2-oz spider weights plus that much meat - the narrow reel throws 1/4 to 1 oz lures.  Trying to hammer BFS into a box is a mistake.  

BFS is everything that's fun and advantageous about baitcasting, and it's possible to set up your reels to blow away any spinning tackle.  

FWIW, I was fishing Ambassadeur weightless 40 years ago - zero tension on the spool and a centrifugal cast could out-do spinning tackle then.  

The only thing that's new about BFS is the name (20 years old), and marketing it as a package to bass fishermen (10 years old).  Threadline fishing goes back 100 years in every fishing culture - even ours.  

This '30s diminutive Shakespeare Tournament Freespool had lighweight alloy spool with shallow cork arbor, made to fish the 4-lb silk braid of its day, and fish 1/8 oz all day. 

 

The Japanese were making parts to improve small-frame Ambassadeur for light weights in '85 - just a few years after 2500C was introduced.  It was simply called reel tuning before it was called BFS, but the goal was the same - reduce the mass and inertia in the spool and spool-driven parts.  

[Bazoo]

Spool mass explains why the Black Max will outcast the Bass Pro Shops Pro Qualifier 2 reels I have with light lures.

 

Thank you very much for the information. I'll have to do some more reading on the subject.