BaitFinesse

I forgot egg beater reels did this. Verify that you line roller is working and that the line is falling into it and not sitting a above or on the bail arm or something. Seen that before on a house brand reel. Slack line would allow the line to stand up and get hung up on the bail arm instead of dropping into the line roller and then develop mega line twist.

This is normal for even normal sized reels. Especially true if the line is under tension while being wound on. Even more so if the reel is graphite or magnesium. Seems to allow the sound to be heard better.

Rods with BFS on them pair better to reels with a little more line capacity than the reels coming from Shimano with BFS in the name IMO. I can empty a Pixy Airy Red of 20# braid with a 1/10 oz ned head and TRD on a Volkey BFS 68L. The Shimano BFS reels are suited to the little trout rods which really isn't BFS. Strange.

For actual BFS targeting bass with tiny bass baits (1/20 oz neds ect) the Kuying Battle Song 68L looks legit. I'll be getting one as a backup to my Volkey 68L

If you're going to go Majorcraft the go Majorcraft. Not sure what they were thinking with the US models. "We'll make our rods worse they'll love that"

Rig it backwards and see if the turd glides

Cover Craw. Some other bait I have of these from Japan thay I forgot that is like a craw stickbait. Literally the only two Jackal baits I have ever bought and they glide and get bit.

Those linear mag brakes really do like smooth casts. I have a few for my Daiwas and while they don't bomb as far as my nonlinear spools precisely because I can't cast them as hard they do offer more than adequate casting distance with very low effort. That's what's really impressive about the ZPI and Ray's Long Cast fixed inducter spools.

Does it glide backwards? Jackal has a thing for this. I have a thing for this.

The space monkey is super versatile and more durable than other rage baits from my experience. It makes for a suitable beaver bait, toad or jig trailer. I always like to have a pack on hand in the warm weather months.

Bank fishing drop shots? I thought that was nearly vertical presentation for fish on sonar. Have I been missing out?

Probably a Tatula Elite Long Cast or Curado K for under $200 budget. There is also the new Zillion but it is line capacity challenged for frog bombing if that's your thing but it will skip and distance cast them for $300 if you shop around. For my money it's a Daiwa JDream or Megabass IP79 with a TD Zillion HLC spool. That's $300-$500 used though and you have to track down a reel and spool.

I measure some of my casts in the yard. It's not very precise but my shoes are a foot long from heal to toe. What is interesting is that I cast off way more line than than where the bait actually lands. I'll spool the reel on the cast that holds 90+ yards of line and only cast the bait like 200 feet. This leads me to question the claims that a senko cannot fall vertically on a baitcast reel due to there not being enough slack line on the cast.

Looks interesting. I'd rather weedless rig it and use a baitcast outfit to skip it than whippy spinning rod as a slingshot.

There is a small cup on the nose of the bait that generates the spitting action of the bait as it walks, hence the name.