I have been wondering about this for a while myself, and have been meaning to try this.
The pro's:
- Like you said, it may be easier to get your sinker alone onto a far bank, and then send your bait there per slide.
- If you stuff up your cast, or if you are not entirely happy with where your cast has landed, you can reel in and cast again without stuffing up your carefully prepared, and rather expensive bait.
- Your carefully prepared bait are not subjected to the acceleration at the start of the cast, the wind during the cast and the impact at the end of the cast, and should look a bit better when it reaches it's destination.
- you do not have to worry much about streamlining your bait, so you may have one or more options for adding stuff that will provide more movement in the water, but that would increase your wind-drag on a cast.
- On it's way to the stopper, your bait will leave a long trail of scent in the water that may lead fish closer in, or down-stream of your bait's final position to your bait. Your bait's scent is thus better dispersed, covering more water.
The Con's:
-You are likely to pick up unintended non-eds, and get taxed on the lighter traces and more finesse presentations used for edibles
- you may get burn-offs if your slide and bait does not get to the stopper ring. I guess a lighter bait may be a bit more difficult to get down to the stopper.
- I also guess that using floatation on your bait, as is often the preferred method for ineds, may also interfere with the working of the non-return slide
All in all, I think it may well be worthwhile to try! Hopefully I'll get to do some "experimentation" from Wednesday afternoon!!!
