What coolyfarm is talking about is calibrating your reels.If calibrated properly,the number of feet on counter will be exactly how much line is actually out.I started calibrating my rods and a few of the guys I fish with several years ago.If you want to calibrate your rods,look at a utube video on how to do it.Can get confusing trying to explain how to do it in this post.There are plenty of good fishermen and charters that don't calibrate and they catch just fine without doing it.As long as all the reels and line are the same,you can eyeball the line on the spool and get your rods pretty close.Others recalibrate their gear 2 to 3 times in a season.I When I read other posts about leads guys run,I'm not looking for exact leads.Every day is different with fish changing depths they feed at not just daily,but hourly.If starting out a new day and don't know what depths are catching,cover the depth of water column with all your lines till find depth fish feeding at.