30lb? That is one heck of knot? If you strip some bad braid off and you bomb a cast that knot would be last one I would want to feel on my thumb. Maybe you put more braid on than me, 100yds is what I do and even after flipping the braid and stripping some here and there at the end of the season I can just start to feel my knot.
I try to keep all reels filled to capacity and 90% is the braid. Considering points made above, I suppose it doesn't matter what I use as backing, the puropse of the mono is only to prevent the braided line from slipping on the spool.
BTW – like lots of folks, after the braid has been on a reel for a year or two I move the line to a different reel of the same spool size. This brings the unused, fresh line that was burried on the old spool to the top of the new spool.
"Ranger" said:
I try to keep all reels filled to capacity and 90% is the braid.
Please don't take this like I'm saying what you do is wrong. I use the mono for two reasons with a casting reel. It is not only an anchor for the braid so it doresn't slip but takes up at least 50% of the spool. When I'm using 100 yards of line the spool is filled to capacity. If you are filing 90% of the spool with braid that is going to be at least 180 yards of 80# on a 6500 size reel. Even if you reverse the line there's still about 100 yards in the middle that never gets used. I think you could save some money on braid if you wanted to in the future. I've even filled some reels with 75 yards when I wanted to try new line (only buying a 150 yd spool) and it's more than enough line for a couple years of casting.
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