after speaking with the owner of torpedo I came to the same conclusion as you even though I bought a spool of 300 and 200 why do I need the 300 if I can get just as deep with 200 and backing. he said through repeated testing they were able to get up to 200 feet down with the 200 weighted Steel and Wire backing.haven't tried them on the water yet as after trying to put it on a couple of my reels I realized I don't have a big enough one to fit 200 steel and 500 wire backing. on that note if you've spooled it up already, what reel were you able to fit it on?