Old fly lines as backing

Or, further means of rejecting the notion that any typical lake fish specie in Minnesota could ever get to your backing and as such, the length and type of backing on your lake reels is basically irrelevant beyond the function of making line pickup faster.

Lots of old fly lines around; I like to label them so I can recall their history/use.  I don't have a lot of spare backing around.  Because I like to use things that are on-hand instead of spending more time/money, I made the dramatic and highly controversial decision to use old fly line as backing.

Orvis Clearwater on the left (again in the vein of which fish can actually run: the Clearwater is not an elite drag; no matter here, in a lake fishing application), the reel in the "cassette" package that I recently acquired.  The pack includes three heavy plastic spools that fit into the spool "holder" which fits into the reel per normal.  In the image above the old 4 wt fly line is spooled on as backing and my BWCA 7 ips full sink lake line is wound too tightly on that little reel on the right.

Here is the lake line now on the large arbor Clearwater.  The 4 wt fly line buried, basically never to be seen again unless this reel gets triaged into carp duty somehow.

The cassette approach needs some field testing, but in the short-term it freed up three fly reels for use in other endeavors.

Nail knots and line clippings.

Cassette pack L to R: 9 wt floating, multi-tip, full sinking lake line.  The three options that should be at hand when in BWCA or more generally when lake fishing for SMB and pike.