Source of float-making materials?

[Mark Wintle]

Just before I get ready to go and look at a load of old gear at Romsey Community School, Romsey, today 9am onwards - Tackle Fair, I'll try and explain the differences in the float names:

Ducker is a cork bodied (body about 3") crowquill with the body at the thin end of the quill, thick end as tip - about 8" long - fished on a river to beat downstream wind, now superseded by waggler variants.

Onion is a bodied (body about 1.5") crow quill with the body at the thick end of the quill with the thin end as the tip - fished on stillwater to beat wind and be very sensitive.

Zoomer - Cane stem about 8" with thick balsa body around 4.5" and loading in base about 1/3 of total load. Fished top and bottom across Welland by late Ivan Marks in very slow moving water with very favourable wind conditions i.e. off back and slightly upstream. Extremely specialised and not to be confused by commercial floats found bearing the same name.

Missile - long peacock quill stem (15") with body at base and loading enough to cock float - fished at long range bottom end only

Bodied waggler - peacock stem (12" upwards) possibly with thinner peacock insert, body (3-4") no loading. Fish bottom end only, possibly as slider, on Fenland waters or big stillwaters at range, some variants (no insert) useful in downstreamer on river where known as a Swinger.

Loaded waggler - as bodied waggler but no body and loading of 75% of shot load.

As you can see a bodied waggler ain't the same as a ducker!

 

[the indifferent crucian]

Except, of course, Billy Lane made all of the above with cane and balsa as decent crowquill was becoming hard to find. Since he use straight, untapered cane one might say that there isn't a difference between a Ducker and a Bodied Waggler.:wh
All those floats I mentioned were in existence before somebody appended the name Waggler.

With the same styles being made still, but with even more different materials, it gets even more confusing.


How was Romsey...bag anything nice? First time in years I have been unable to go. Grrr.

 

[Mark Wintle]

There's no doubt that the commercialisation of floats by Billy Lane and Ivan Marks led to different materials being used which affected how they fished, were designed and most importantly the cost of production. The old style true material floats were simply too expensive to make but people like Ivan hand-made and used the real McCoy.

I enjoyed Romsey. I wasn't looking at rods and reels but did snap up two of the David Carl Forbes books that I didn't previously own; the sea fishing book and best of all, Rough River and Small Stream Fishing, both at reasonable prices.

I must be nearly famous, three people came up to me and said that they enjoyed my Frome chapter in John Searl's roach book!

 

[binka]

What an interesting, if old, thread and there are things which I have no recent recollection of reading in more recent threads covering similar things.

I hope it resurrects as a result of this post and is added to further, I've really enjoyed reading this and considering the opposing sentiments on hand versus mass produced floats.

Personally I can see both sides of the debate but I have to confess that the satisfaction of catching something on your own, hand crafted creation, really is second to none regardless of whether or not the float performs as well as a mass produced effort.

Of course it's all part of a wider picture and I would consider location and feeding to be about the most important factors but hey...

These are floats we are talking about