>>1321345>8lb braid>braid8lb braid of a quality brand is fine on an ultralight, it's thinner than 4lb mono and depending on which brand may be thinner than 2lb mono.
I agree with the rest of that.
>redds is pretty good thoughTry Crispin, Strongbow, Magner's, or Stella Cidre. Also, Angry Orchard has like 5 flavors, ranging from outright sour to "holy shit did I just chug straight high fructose corn syrup?" so they probably have one you would like, even if you can't reliably buy it at your local YaYa or 7/11.
>>1321303Were you throwing ball-head jigs with like a 1.5-2" curly tail on them? Those have a lot of wind resistance for their weight. Typically you can expect to throw a soft bait about half as far as a hard bait of the same weight because they're lower density/higher surface area.
As Skid already said, a 3000-size reel is fuckhuge for an ultralight rod, and would be more at home on a 7' plus MH. It's probably hanging so far below your first guide you're getting an assload of friction from it.
I have an 8' Fenwick UL and I use a 1000-size reel to great effect. It's a cheapo Lew's Mr. Trout, it's spooled with 4lb Trilene XL, and I can throw a 1/16oz/1.5" mini tube about 100 feet with it.
The other thing, as pointed out by
>>1321350the UL rods are pretty whippy, you can't snap-cast like you would a bass rig, you have to kind of lob it with the whole body and let that whippyness work for you.
>>1321354Depends on how you're hooking it. Lip or eye hook you could do a 2/0, back or tail hook a 3/0 or 4/0.
