Just picked up an ugly stick gx2 combo 5000 reel and I’m trying to figure out how much braid to get for it at what weight. Fishing mainly into the great south bay, NY of a pier or sand for fluke and occasionally on a friends boat.
I was thinking somewhere around 20-30 lbs braid but there’s no documentation online for how much braid the reel can hold, only how much mono the reel can hold and I want to use braid (I believe the numbers on the reel itself are for mono).
I also can’t find the min/ max lure weight for this rod, it’s a medium heavy 7’.
Pictures included for reference, any help is greatly appreciated!
Posted by Aggressive-Rent-6325
5 Comments
The numbers on the reel are for mono, but most braided line will print their “mono equivalent diameter” on the box somewhere, so you can judge capacity. Braided line is considerably thinner than mono for the same pound test.
I think 30 pound braid would be fine and give you lots of line to work with.
I have a 3000 reel and couldn’t fit an entire 300yd spool of 12lb braided onto it.
Braided is thinner and stronger so I’d imagine at 20-30lbs you could still fit about 300yds onto the spool or at least I’d start at 300yds and see where it gets you as my best educated guess. You’re looking to spool up to about 1/8th from the edges of the reel.
Braid is sold in mono equivalent diameters so if you look at the braid it will say something like “same size as 14lb mono.” In this example, you could fill the reel with 215 yards of braid of that size (prob 20lb). That said, you don’t need to fill the spool with braid, you can do mono first then attach it to the braid. If you do fill the spool with braid, once a year unwind all the braid and rewind it on backwards so you use the unused portion instead of buying new braid. As for lure weight, I would just look up the same size action and speed of rod and see what that rod uses for weights, it doesn’t need to be exact because if the lure is too heavy you’ll know by how much the rod bends haha. I typically never go much over an ounce on a MH because I feel like I lose some of the action and sensitivity but I think a 7’ MH Fast can run 3/8 up to 1.5oz lures with no issue.
Just a heads up since it looks like you’re going for bigger fish with that combo.
Braid likes to bury itself in the spool under hard tension so if you’re going after something that puts up a strong fight, get oversized braid. For instance for a dedicated catfish rod, i would go with at least 65lb braid even if I would only use 20lb if it was mono. Not because i need the strength but because larger diameter braid doesn’t dig in so bad.
Probably 280 yards of 30# braid.