Bait runner on or off ?!?

[MitchyMagic]

Hi All !

I want to guage peoples opinions about using a bait runner or not. There seems to be divided opinion on this subject so i wanted people to share their views. When i fish i have my bait runners set and i obviously disengage it before striking, the trend nowadays seems to be with big pit reels i.e no baitrunner facility - Do people that use big pits just slacken off the clutch and then tighten up when they are into a fish or perhaps just leave the clutch where it is all the time ??

Cheers

Mitch

[grandad carpy]

Before the days of baitrunners, the choice was to either slacken the clutch, or fish a churner (where the handles were allowed to rotate) and risk line being thrown off the spool or/and rapped knuckles.

The obvious choice was to slacken the clutch. Modern reels only require a minimum of rotation to offer sufficient tension to play fish as opposed to 2 or 3 turns on the majority of reels from way back when. Consequently life is easy today.

Too many freespool reels are used with the baitrunner facility set far too light anyway, offering no resistance to a taking fish. Nobody would think twice about locking up when snag-fishing so stopping a bit short of that by offering a resistance of some degree should not be considered unusual.

[MarkeR]

i used to slacken off the clutch. once i got a run i'd cup the spool to hit it then tighten the clutch up a bit once the fish was on
i much prefer just turning the handle on a baitrunner though so when big pit reels started appearing with baitrunner facilities on i bought some

[grandad carpy]

That just about sums it up for me. But I still hold the spool when bending into a fish. Old habits are hard to break.

[Tom]

When I first started out and couldnt stretch to buying baitrunners I used to use line clips and fish with an open bail arm, so that was a kind of hit-and-hold principle but worked well. I do use the baitrunner facility but always have some resistance on, just slack enough to prevent my rods launching or pod disappering into the lake

[grandad carpy]

When carp fishing especially, the majority of times we rely on the bolt effect for self hooking. It's not only the lead that supplys this. Line tension also supplys it's share, even when fishing slack lines it comes into effect as a secondary feature.