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Birddogs,

As Ed said it varies boat to boat and as mentioned really depends on the water you fish. If you don't fish offshore there is no reason to have a 300+ copper. I have various rigs starting at 50 and like most incriminating in 50ft lengths. One suggestion if you are only going to rig a few rods, inline weights like torpedo divers. If you don't fish offshore much stay on the shorter end like 75, 100, 150, 200. If you happen to go offshore add the torpedo divers and you have increased your depth for deeper waters. The divers come with a depth chart that I have found very accurate and with a couple of them you can have 4 rods that cover various depth. They will cost you about the same as a new rod but use up less storage space and you save the cost of a new reel to put on the rod.

Good comments, especially about the "super long" lines being no fun. If you are in a tournament, by all means use whatever you need. Reel 'em in on marlin gear, make the reeler crank in 1000 feet of line. But it's called sport fishing, meaning if it's not fun, it's not sporty. Even on my charters I don't put out more than 10 colors (300 feet) and only sparingly use 300 coppers. If I used walleye boards or other big in-lines, I'd probably limit the coppers to 200 feet. A 200 copper will take a lure "roughly" the same depth as a 10 color leadcore - @40 feet. Generally, I will choose a 200 copper instead of a 10C core. Same thing, I have a 100 copper that catches a lot of fish and it's way more fun to reel in the fish than if I'd caught it on a 5C core.

Ed: Very interesting about adding the one or two LC colors on a copper. Deploying the first 30 40 feet of copper is always the hardest and I often won't let my customers do it, or I'm sorry if I did. Is one color enough to pull the copper out smoothly? I'm going to try it!

Mike,

I use 2 color, but 1 may do it. It does work really nice for deploying copper.