Windfalls

Looking at the price of some items of tackle and you would think that we were being had. Someone's having a larf especially with stuff like plastic boxes, rig foam and polystyrene products.

The other day I had to order a new battery for the camper van. The battery came in a plastic box that will act as a handy store box for fly-tying stuff or even as a filing box for documents, and some of the packaging consisted of blocks of closed cell foam of the type that Messrs Veniards would charge you a couple of quid for a small 75mm x 75mm x 12mm piece. The foam is in blocks about 25mm thick and will make at least fifty float bodies and a couple of hundred zigs that can be coloured with marker pens or covered with materials.

Little wife needed some new curtain rails so off we went to the shops and brought two back that were packed in celophane tubes. Each tube contained three packing pieces that are identical in size and composition to the Nash rig foam I bought for three quid last year. OK, they are all black, but I've got six times the Nash quantity for nowt! And black is a useful colour to have.

Then there is soft foam used to make dead baits float and pop-ups pop up. The farm hand where we used to live broke the rear window of the tractor twice in a week while harrowing without a guard fitted. Each new windscreen came wrapped in soft foam - about 3 metres of it or about thirty quid if you bought the same amount. The white stuff makes a cracking bread imitation and the blue is remarkably good for seeing when used to make a dumbbell float. I'm hoping they send the next screen in yellow or red packaging.

Same with plastic boxes. Lidl were doing little storage boxes containing a selection of Rawl plugs and screws cheaper than the other shops were selling the empty boxes. Crazy!

So, what have you lot scrounged?

Clive you just wouldn't believe the stuff I save, scrounge and utilise, you really wouldn't. So I'm not going to embarrass myself and say anything more.
Other than...












I'm a true Yorkshireman through and through! :wh

Ne'er a truer word said.
I find myself going to the tackle shop just to check out all these little items that we seem to need, an' then try an' get my head around how I can make it myself.
I own a wine bar, so have an endless supply of cork. I've lost count of the number of uses I've put the corks to.

things have a bransd name o nthem in tackle shops cost 23 times as much as an unbranded item from a supermarket - small plastic boxes for keeping swivels , beads ect in

I found a little shop today, quite by accident, they sell pet foods, air guns, and odds n ends of fishing tackle. Looking around they were doing buffer beads, swivels, run rings and other bits n bobs , all pretty much similar and just as fit for purpose as major tackle dealers sell in my area, the differance was half the price , or looking at it another way twice as many in a packet.
I asked the owner how he did it and he said he ordered them in bulk then packeged them himself.
Top marks to the guy, I know where my rig bits are coming from in the future.

I looked at the NGT site the other day. It is amazing the price of bulk lots of the little bits of tackle we buy in the shops. I can see where the tackle shops get their "own brand" bits from.