I hear some people say a piece of electrical tape will work fine. Thoughts?

Seems like a pain and a lot of work with electrical tape.

No you don't have to back it at all, it just waste money if you don't.

I use the cheapest 20 lb mono I can find.

Never tried electrical tape but that leaves you with having to fill a spool with braid. The purposes of backing are two-fold: one gives you the grip on your spool that your braid needs and secondly it requires less braid to be put on the spool thus saving you money.

Then, when you would otherwise replace the braided line after good use you can actually just unspool the braid and re-spool in reverse order. Ta-da! New braided line.

Not necessary to do it but I do it because it gives the braid grip.

You can tie braid directly to some spools and yes the electrical tape does work but I did not care for the glue residue it leaves on a spool.

I use 3" of electrical tape...works like a charm.

Okay that makes sense. My spool only holds 100 yards thats why I was asking if I could just tie directly too the spool, but I don't want it to slip.

+1

Straight braid will ONLY slip when you go to set the hook on a dd that eats your frog in a FLW tournament.

This ^^

I back braid with...






























braid

With a 100 yard spool one wrap with electrical tape that's all you need

I tie a slip knot, similar to an inverse fisherman's knot (there is probably a real name for it), and I have been tying it for nearly 20 years without a slip yet. Granted, I still havent hooked that DD yet, but it holds just fine on the 7 & 8 lb'ers.