If you’re fishing from a boat, you want to use the momentum of the boat to keep the line you’re pulling off your reel from piling up at your feet. If you’re fishing from the bank, you can do the same thing by walking down the bank. If you’re wading in a creek or river, let the current do this for you.
Regardless of where or how you’re fishing, you never want to pull a backlash out and allow it to pileup at your feet. This will lead to a whole new problem when you get the backlash picked out and you go to reel your line back in. Just as you win one battle, the war will continue to rage as you find knot after knot has formed in the pile of slack line.
Instead, by keeping your foot on the trolling motor for instance, the momentum of the boat helps pull your slack line through the rod guides as you pick the backlash out. Then when you’re done with the backlash, you simply reel the line back in that you’ve pulled behind the boat into a nice straight line. There are hazards to this, you don’t want to troll across a bunch of trees while dragging a half ounce jig behind the boat, for instance. And you don’t want to walk way up the bank through a bunch of bushes to do this. Again, be careful to not create a problem while trying to solve a different one. But somehow, someway, make sure you’re not piling up your line at your feet as you pick out a backlash.
