Here's a cheap, practical way to tell how much line you got out next time you are trolling and don't have a line counting reel. Take a regular pole (with line) and attach one weighted cork. The orange cigar ones at Wal-Mart work fine. Go into your yard and using a tape measure let out 25 feet of line from the rod tip to the cork. Then use a Sharpie marker and make a mark on the line right above the reel. Now if you reel in the line and throw it back out to where the mark with the Sharpie is on the line that's 25 feet. You can mark more lines with the Sharpie in 25 feet increments to however far out you want to troll. Now when you get on the lake, use the regular pole and let out the line to how far you want to troll according to the marks with the Sharpie on the line. The floating cork will let you know where to put your jigs or crankbaits to correspond to the amount of line out that you want. Then reel in the regular pole and you'll be pretty accurate with the amount of line out. Hope this helps and hope I ain't confused nobody. Jigsatwitchin'............cd