Sloegoe

Sell me that Rat $20 FF ??

Looks like DV

All of the above!! Hope you are tying a Polomar where you wet it well and pull the tag end until tight, then pull on both hard. Then tie an overhand knot sort of loosely on top of that with the tag end running down along the bait, this will help shed debris and act as a shock absorber when bumping cover.

Also if you let off the tension as you reel in the last feet of your line at the end of a cast, a loose wrap often sits more horizontally across the spool, not inline with the other wraps, then all the force of the casting line will be distributed over the cross section of the line not the entire length of line, that causes some serious weakiening..

If you're casting off CXX its a spool manangement issue. Just like a spinning reel, you can't have loose wraps and you cannot have even a slight overrun during the cast . If you let loose line on the spool at the end of your cast, which happens because there is less pull on the bait the line ill dig into itself causing a knick and tension at that point as it comes off the spool, if you get a slight overrun during the cast the outgiong line will slice the loose loop.

One more thing, I'm in California where we have no fishing bouy lines and no boating after sunset. and I'm taking 8.5 foot rods and launching 6oz baits as far as I possibly can to get to off limit spots, I can drain a 300 size reel with 30lb mono easy, so most of the time I'm only using 20lb with a Deps 250 sized bait and still never casted off a bait.