Trying to dial in the new gear and figure out the sweet spot for casting weight. So I took some frozen bait, cut up some different sizes and weighed them.
Here's what I found.
This was an 8oz chunk about 1.5" wide. Slicing 3/8-1/2" off the piece yielded a 6oz chunk of bait. That's a 9/0 Mustad J Hook in the rubber band bridle for reference
Slicing the 6oz chunk in half gave me a real castable 3oz bait.
Always wondered how much a Mac Head really weighed. Here's a nice head from a typical 10-11" frozen mackerel we can buy in bait stores. Weighed in at 3oz.
What about Bat Ray? This is a 2" wide, 5" long piece of wing sliced straight off a 16" bat. Weighed in at 3.5oz.
My rod is rated 6oz-12oz. I'm guessing the sweet spot is going to be 9oz-10oz. I've been throwing a 6oz weight, but Binh said I should try an 8oz weight to really load up the rod, so I'm going to have to try that. It would be awesome if I could get an effective cast using 8oz of weight and 3oz-4oz of bait.