So I put new 12lb line on my brother's baitcast and had it set up for a swimbait and he put a dinky topwater on it and casted 2 feet and basically have to respool the reel with new line!

although it's quite funny watching him try to cast far and it only goes 2 ft, only brought 2 poles and he didn't want to go back to get another so he started cutting line out of the reel and finally got it cleared but lost a lot of line, told him to put a senko on set the tension and finally got some good casts

This is the best tutorial on clearing a backlash I've seen yet. Also the bait caster pic used in the vid has come in pretty handy. I have on;y had a backlash I've given up on once but If I used this pic I probably could have got it out much sooner. I've seen other tips + tricks but this works the best for me and my set up.

A good top water I had fun with over the weekend is the Jitter Bug. Heavy enough for a good cast and tension but floats great.

I keep a little pair of plastic tweezers for doing the same thing he is doing with the hook.

I use a tooth scraper pick from cvs.

The video is a great how-to on how to undo a backlash.

Good video but I dunno, his was about 90x worse than that, and about 75% of his line was really loose on the reel.. and he was using a 2" or so minnow.

What kind of line was it?

It might have multiple of those "snags" which has happened to me before when I was figuring out how to use one. If you give the line a slight "tug" where it is stuck you can see where the loose line is looped around the line coming out. You just take your pic or whatever you're using, pull it free and keep pulling out line till you hit the next one. Repeat.

I know it's sucky, when I was first learning how to cast one it was a birds nest almost every time. It's part of learning to cast one I guess :-). But hey at least I've become good at something in the fishing world! haha

Good video but I dunno, his was about 90x worse than that, and about 75% of his line was really loose on the reel.. and he was using a 2" or so minnow.

I can only imagine how bad that backlash must have been. Why did you allow him to even attempt to try and cast that in the first place?

I can only imagine how bad that backlash must have been. Why did you allow him to even attempt to try and cast that in the first place?

to get a laugh? That's what I'd do. Lololol.

I like to use an old knitting needle to get my backlash out.