KastKing Spartacus II Baitcasting Fishing Reel, 6oz Ultralight Baitcaster Reel, Super Smooth with 17.6 LB Carbon Fiber Drag, 7.2:1 Gear Ratio, 39mm Palm Perfect Lower Profile Design

This is by far one of my favourite baitcasters, super smooth and reliable. The drag is also very smooth and the casting is relatively effortless with rarely any backlashes. It does struggle a bit with very light lures but that’s just the nature of any non bfs baitcaster. Overall a superb reel and one I highly reccomend for the price! Great job again Kastking!

Beginner angler - Never used a baitcaster before, I had no issue fishing with this, smooth, good tension and braking. I'm not experienced enough to in-depth analyze it or compare it to more expensive products. But worked great for me. Birdsnest'ed quite a few times starting out, but that's not the reel's fault. Casting with any baitmaster takes practice. Got another one as a present for somebody, they also loved it.

I got the Spartacus II in the “spindrift” color. I was kind of skeptical on the exact color because I personally find it hard to capture a “true color” on camera, but they NAILED IT! I love this color, it’s absolutely beautiful. Beautiful light, pastel blue. Pros: •It’s a bait caster for about $40, so that’s cool. •It’s perfect for learning the baitcasting type of reel without spending a ton of your hard-earned money. •The drag star *clicks* when you adjust it, so that pretty nice for a reel this inexpensive. •I’d be remiss not to mention the color again, it’s unique (imo) •Bird’s nests (Or “professional overrun”, I’ve also heard “Backlash”) are easy to avoid if the magnetic brakes are up all the way and you have the spool tension set correctly for what you’re throwing. •You can straight-up launch some bait with this thing. When I do my part I can throw some baits close to 70 feet with a 7 Foot MH rod. And I’m not even good at it, yet. That might not be the point for some of y’all, but it’s fun. •it’s nice if you like to palm your reel, I find it to be very comfortable, though, I don’t ordinarily palm reels, I rest my thumb on the side, which I also find comfortable on this reel. Cons: • My particular reel felt very rough out of the box, exactly how I imagine a dry, or scratched bearing would feel while reeling. • The magnetic breaking system seems to have a less-than-linear influence depending on power level. For instance, when the magnetic breaking is set to the max, I don’t have to put my thumb on the spool at all to keep a bad bird’s nest with 12Lb. fluorocarbon, so that’s actually good, I guess. If I take the brake to 8 I seem to be able to achieve ~6 feet more distance or so, but you have to pay attention or the ‘nest is coming for you. BUT if I turn it to anything below 6, its like all the birds on earth built a giant nest in my reel while I wasn’t looking...so that’s neat. I’m sure there is a trick to it I don’t know yet but it seems off to me. •Only after two days, the gears are making noise louder than my Royal Legend did after months of use (before my friend borrowed it forever,lol) so that’s alarming. I’ll buy some grease and oil as it calls for in the instructions, but I didn’t expect to be needing this soon considering my past experience with KastKing. However it could just be my particular reel. I might update this review it after I oil and grease it. But for now it’s getting a 3.75/5 I’d still recommend it, but I’d probably buy the Royal Legend before I’d buy another Spartacus II. Update: The rough bearing sound has worked itself out, so that’s good news. I also changed my line from 12# Florocarbon to 30# braid and all my bird nest issues are gone. Florocarbon is not a friend of mine. The memory in the Florocarbon line I used is just like mono...garbage.

very good bait caster, easy to use and very smooth and casts very far with using anywhere from 1/4 to 3/8 oz lures with medium brakes and makes a low v sounding noise while casting but watch some videos on how to set up and the brakes make a huge difference in castability

I love this reel. I at first bought it because I’m all about that striker green color. I also bought the Spartacus 2 rod separately because I wanted a medium rod instead of the MH that comes with the combo. Anyways I’ve been out on the Puyallup river here in WA state raking in pinks for weeks now and doing it with ease. I now have it dialed in to do exactly what I need it to do. I don’t know if this is a problem but I did have backlash issues when using braid. I’ve used 15, 25, 40, & 50 lbs on it and all just acted way too sensitive for me. But I’m going to call that operator error. I switched to a 15lbs mono thinking it’s just me and I need to get better at using a caster and I did get better or I think I did. With the mono line I didnt get any backlash ever. Just yesterday I casted over the river and into the trees and still no backlash. All I know is it’s been running smooth and perfect so I won’t be changing back to braid. This reel can work its magic with the line I have on it. PS: This is my first bait casting reel so if you’re like me wanting to learn to use one. I would say buy it.

These reels work really good.

Smooth and fantastic reel

PROs: - Lightweight - Very Inexpensive ($36 on sale) CONs: - No Tension Knob Clicking control - Bad design flaw: Gap between spool and housing - spool control is hard to pinpoint and will constantly bird nest deep in the spool I am a long time customer of KastKing products and have enjoyed everything I have purchased so far... until I got the Spartacus II reel. When I first received the reel I was disappointed to find that the spool tension know does NOT click like other models. This was one of the biggest let downs of this reel. The first cast out on the water I bird nested it to the point where I ended up having to cut off half of my new 12 lbs Fluorocarbon line. Even after constant adjustments to the reel I still ended up getting small loops in the line deep in the spool where I would have to pull off quite a bit of line to get to the loops. Plus some of the loops found it's way in between the spool and the housing wrapping around the spool shaft inside. Here is where the design of the reel made the biggest impact to its downfall for me. There is a big enough gap between the spool and the housing to allow for 12 lbs Fluorocarbon to slide in between... how can this happen. This is the first time this has happened to me on a KastKing reel, but then again I run braid on all my other reels except the Crixus bait casting reel which has 12 lbs Mono on it; it doesn't have this issue. Sad to say that this might be the last KastKing reel I buy. If I could return the reel I would trade it for another Crixus or a Royal Legend II (both of which I already own and have tension knob clicking controls). "Double Tapered Control Chute” Line Guide that reduces line friction for ultimate line control and birds nest reduction" - This is false. I continuously bird nested even after adjusting the reel multiple times. I have been using bait casting reel for well over 20 years so I would hope that I know how to properly adjust one. Suggestions: For the same amount of money you can purchase the Royal Legend II in either 5.4:1 or 7.2:1. It has a lot better specs then the Spartacus II reel for the same price. I would stay away from this reel. Also, not related to the product but to the company. KastKing used to place cards in their boxes for doing feedback on their products. I purchased four different items and none of them had the feedback cards in them only the Loyalty card which be warned is an unsecured website. Any information typed into that webpage is susceptible to interception due to no encryption being used. So I hope you don't going putting your personal information on it. I'm a Cyber Security professional with over 6 years experience in that field and these are things I look out for. Their site that they use to sell products on the other hand does have encryption so purchasing for that site is safe. Updated (18 Sep 2023): I have been using this reel for quite a while now and I do have to say that it has surprised me with it's smoothness and castability. After getting it all tuned in properly I rarely run in to the issue I was getting before with the line catching between the spool and the housing. I am updating my score since I am not having that specific issue anymore. I still continue to purchase KastKing rods and reels and will definitely recommend them to other anglers that are on a tight budget.