I think the technology is at hand to do this: On baitcasters, put a sensor that can determine outgoing line speed, and when the line speed begins to drop have a microprocessor slow the spool down to match. A refinement would be to calculate how much to slow down the spool based on how full of line the spool is.

What do you think? Would there be a market for such a reel, or is part of the appeal of baitcasters the fact that they take some time to develop the ability to not backlash?

I thought Daiwa had something like that a few years back. The cost would probably prohibt it for an entry level baitcaster which is where most of the market would be.

WAG, but I think it would add about $10 to the price of a reel.

Shimano did this with the Calais DC and Calcutta DC. DC standing for digital control. And with a price point of $649 they didn't sell worth a darn I don't think, so they stopped making them. No one needs all that anyway. Just get a better eduacted thumb haha. Plus picking backlashes is just part of fishing.

You may have something there. I've never been very good at casting with a level wind reel but, I do like the control and feel that they offer after the cast is made. As a kid, I can remember the old style reels without the free moving spool and how I was always trying to undo a massive backlash while others were pulling in fish
Using my Dad's Zebco was like a dream after that.
The microprocessor chip idea sounds feasible, but could be expensive to develop,market, and package into an acceptable and attractive form factor for the end use. If computer aided backlash control ever becomes mainstream, I'm wondering if automated cast and retrieve would be next. Where do you draw the line ?

The micro-processing part actually sounds pretty easy, but sensing actual line speed (as opposed to spool rotational speed) would be harder unless you went to some special line. But some genius could probably figure it out.

Both reel are still in production. The Calais is $649 and the Calcutta is $529...I own both and they are very fun to fish. Necessity??..no...but a lot of fun.. and they can still be backlashed

Interesting Steve. From the product description for the Calcutta DC:



The reason it still backlashes is because they haven't done the line speed monitoring part to match the rate of spool rotation to outgoing line. If you had that in place, you could literally cast into a brick wall and the reel would not overrun. You might have to have special line with distance markers embedded so that line speed could be derived from how fast those markers are whizzing by, but it could be done.

just learn how to throw a baitcaster....geesh! Once you get good at it, you'll be loosening the tension controls up as much as you possibly can. You know you've mastered the baitcaster when your casting a 1.5 KVD 30 yards or more.
I don't understand why people buy a baitcaster and then turn up all the controls on it so much that you couldn't cast a lure more than 20 feet. No one is immune to the occasional backlash.............Practice!

Huckleberry, has it ever occurred to you that a significant minority of people lack the physical talent to "just learn"? No amount of practice will keep them from backlashing with the controls free.

It has been done already

Point me to it, bpettus1!

Wait 30yds is far? Only time I get backlashed is when I see a big bass jump out the water and I rush to chunk my lure near it.

For bass, 30 yards is way far. I can only cast my baitcasters about 30 or 40 feet, so I reserve them for underwater soft plastics and jigs. For swim baits and topwater frogs, I pull out my spinning reels.

Correlating spool rotational motion with the lines translational motion, and allowing for the diminishing diameter of the line mass on the spool as the line moves out could require a pretty nifty little algorithm. Maybe sensing tangent force at the top of the spool (as applied by the moving line) could be monitored to regulate the spool's rotational speed to keep up with the line. The bottom line would be, if something like this could be effective and marketed at a cost that would be attractive to buyers.