Lure Speed and Reeling Cadence
Many of us have a good sense of how fast our lures should be moving to trigger strikes from
muskies. But for those that try to be precise with our lure speeds, especially when comparing
them to trolling speeds, I’ve put together a little formula to determine the speed of our lures in
miles per hour. This formula depends on two things that you’re going to need to know. One of
these things depends on your equipment, and the other depends on your presentation.
The formula is applied by multiplying a conversion factor (0.0568) times the line pick-up (L),
times your reeling cadence (R):
V = (0.0568) L R
The number “L” is the factor that depends on your equipment. This is the value of the line pick-
up for your reel when it is fully spooled. Most reels have this printed on them nowadays, but at
the very least this information is listed in the specifications for the reel that you can find either
in its manual or online.
The number “R” is what I call your reeling cadence. This is how many cranks per second that
you are reeling with. This depends on how fast you are reeling: burning, slow-rolling, or
something in between. Reeling cadence is something you have to measure. How I suggest you
do it is to use a stopwatch (there’s one on every smartphone, for instance). Start your
stopwatch as you crank your reel. Count out 20 cranks and see how long that takes. Then “R”
can be found by taking 20 divided by the time. Remember that when you start counting out the
cranks, you should start at zero cranks when you start the stopwatch (“0-1-2-3-….20”) since
you’re counting the number of completed cranks.
As an example of this from my own experience, let’s consider cranking in a bucktail at a
modestly high speed using an Abu Garcia Beast (High Speed). For this reel the line pick-up for a
full spool is 34 inches per crank (this is “L” in the formula). Reeling in relatively fast, I complete
20 cranks in about 8.1 seconds. My reeling cadence would be 2.47 cranks/second (20 cranks
divided by 8.1 seconds). The speed of my bucktail at full spool would be:
V = (0.0568) (34) (2.47) = 4.77mph
Note that the amount of line you pick up per crank depends on the diameter of your spool. If
you want to estimate how much your line pick-up varies, watch your spool. Just before you
cast, look down to see your full spool. After you cast, at the moment your lure hits the water,
look down at your spool and see how the diameter has changed. On a long cast, the spool
diameter at the beginning of your retrieve can be 50% smaller than diameter it has at the end
of your retrieve (where all of the line is back on the spool). A practical example of this is that my
fully-spooled Abu Garcia Beast has a spool diameter of 44 millimeters (I used a vernier caliper
to measure this). After peeling off 110 feet of 100-pound test braid, the spool diameter goes
down to about 31 millimeters. This means that my line pick-up value is roughly two-thirds as big
at the beginning of my retrieve compared to when the lure reaches the boat. If I were to
maintain a steady reeling cadence throughout my retrieve, the lure speed increases by about
50% as I pick up line. If we use the example I ran through above, it means that my lure would
start out with a speed of about 3.2mph when I start my retrieve and finish with a speed of
4.77mph as my lure reaches the boat.
Knowing exactly how fast your lures are traveling while casting is probably not crucial
information. Muskies aren’t using a radar gun to determine whether to chase our lures, after
all. What I do think is informative, however, is noting that the speed of retrieve for our casting
presentations is highly variable. Slow-rolling a bait using a reel with low line pick-up may
produce speeds in the range of 1.0 to 1.6mph. Normal retrieve speeds are in the 3.0-4.5mph
range. Burning in baits using high pick-up reels can produce maximum lure speeds in excess of
6.5mph. Do we muskie anglers use this same variety of speeds when we are trolling? How many
of us trollers set the throttle at a single speed in the mid-3.0-mph range and forget it? Maybe
we bump the speed up by 0.2mph if we want to cover more water or knock the speed down by
0.5mph when the water is cold. I feel like if we continually use such a narrow range of speeds,
we are limiting ourselves to plain Jane presentations with little variety. I offer this all as some
food for thought on how we might improve our presentations, both casting and trolling, by
understanding the speed of the retrieves we are already making. Best of luck on the water!