Any need for specialist floats for deep water these days?

Given that most of us fish shallow pools now and fewer fish deep pits and resis, have Polaris type ledger floats had their day?

About 18 years ago I designed a float that cocked and locked when it hit bottom enabling me to fish dead bottom at any depth. While developing the idea I undertook to research what else was available and I bought a set of Polaris floats (consisting of around 8 or 9 floats), which I still have.

For those of you who don't know, they incorporate a 'frixion' device (I think that's what its called) which basically held your line at an angle causing it to 'hold' under tension but allowed free-running while slack. You cast out to your chosen spot without having to plumb depth and let the lead hit bottom, then as the float rose to the surface you slowly wound in until it cocked. They worked, however I never really liked them much and stuck with my own design because the Polaris sat unnaturally bent towards you in the water, also you had to delicately keep an exact tension on them and readjust occasionally to compensate for flow and wind movement.

Anyway, I heard Polaris has since sold out and wondered if the reason had anything to do with anglers mainly fishing shallow commercial water now?
Or maybe float fishing has gone out of fashion?

Appreciate your thoughts please.

In my opinion I think Polaris floats ( and the like ) did a reasonable job but I found them' clumsy ' in many ways and hardly suited to my style of fishing ( mainly for roach and crucians ) plus the fact they didn't always ' release ' and drop down the line when playing a fish......
I can recall the last time I used one though and finding myself with float jammed up near the top ring of a 14' rod unable to get the fish anywhere the net in a sort of stalemate situation. Result was a broken tip from stupidly trying to use it to move the float.....A fellow angler help me in the end..............

As a result of this I went back to sliders of my own making ( loaded or otherwise ) where I could control shape and size for a given situation and of the required delicacy. This covers all my deepish water fishing, so said Polaris floats are in storage.

NOT to say they don't work ( my example above may have been due to a faulty float or my attempts to use it ) but from what Laguna says the above the company is no more anyway, so maybe that tells a story ?

ps Laguna..............Are you able to share your ' cock and lock ' design with us as something with which to fish dead depth has merits IMHO ??

pps Float fishing out of fashion ?? Good God man, what are you saying !!!

Interesting thread, though..


Last bit...I wonder if anyone else has come up with a ' perfect ' cock and lock method ( that's a question ! )

I've got to admit I've never even handled a Polaris let alone used one, I've always felt that a sliding bodied waggler or Driftbeater did the job well enough to save me having to look any further.

I remember looking at them in their early days and thinking it was a bit gimmicky as it was really float-legering... Can they be fished with a bulk shot off the bottom too or are they totally dependent on that anchored weight to tighten down to?

Either way I decided what wasn't broken didn't need fixing, a tad ironic coming from me

I only had experience of these when a friend I fished with a lot started using them on commercials. I did not like the look of the ones he was using, they were rather big when the water demanded fine sensitive fishing, and I think I caught more fish than he did. . he was a sea angling who never really could get used to fine lines, small hooks and floats so he thought they were wonderful. Also I have always managed well enough with slider floats although it is a bit of a palaver setting them up to get the right depth. I never really saw anglers using them when i was fishing a lot of commercials about 10-15 years ago and these days fish mainly rivers so never knew if they caught on. I never really liked the look of them myself, although I could see the time saving element but that was the only merit I could see in them.

Speaking purely for myself, yes there's a need. However, I would suspect that demand for such floats is severely limited. I don't see that many anglers fishing with floats anywhere. On a deep water venue, river or stillwater, the numbers are even further reduced.

I do use Polaris floats. However, I can well understand people's frustrations with them. With practice they do get easier. They are also an awful lot more sensitive than they might appear to be. If anyone has any deep water floats, Polaris or otherwise, that they want rid of, I'll happily give them a home.

When faced with the situation of very deep water but still requiring a float fished presentation then a simple bodied waggler with a (relatively) longer rod, and knowing how to tie a simple Stop Knot is all that is really needed.

Leave the ends of the stop know a couple of inches long and they will fly through the rod's rings without a problem . . . .

As the Meerkat says . . .

Simples!

I did buy a few examples of the Polaris floats years ago but never really liked them preferring the method above.

There was also the lock slide float, that i think came out before polaris floats ??,

I will fish a float rather than a lead any day, but there are times and swims when a lead/feeder is the way to go.

As others have said, a waggler will do the job just as good, but i use a drift beater, which i find does the job spot on for me.

I fish waters that have depths of 20 foot under the rod tip, and one water that goes down to around 35 feet a few rods lengths out. Great slider float fishing with a 15 foot rod, and the simple stop knot.

Float fishing finished, for the new age angler maybe, most just want to sit behind alarms and don't have any water craft skills to their fishing.

Polaris are good floats, especially on waters with an abundance of surface weed which limits the efficiancy of ledgering/feederfishing etx They can be cast into a clear spot and show bites where bottom gears registration is sometimes impaired (such a blunt instrument bottom gear at times).
Had numerous big Bream on float gear when others have struggled using other methods.
Like some I have a full set of Polaris floats and tho I dont use them too often They are invaluable in certain circumstances.
I think it was Sheffield rodbuilder Terry Smith that had a hand in their development. A top angler.

flightliner said:

Polaris are good floats, especially on waters with an abundance of surface weed which limits the efficiancy of ledgering/feederfishing etx They can be cast into a clear spot and show bites where bottom gears registration is sometimes impaired (such a blunt instrument bottom gear at times).
Had numerous big Bream on float gear when others have struggled using other methods.
Like some I have a full set of Polaris floats and tho I dont use them too often They are invaluable in certain circumstances.
I think it was Sheffield rodbuilder Terry Smith that had a hand in their development. A top angler.

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Yes Mick, Terry played a major role in the development of the ''Polaris''. I visited with him regularly , he was also a very fine rod builder, a very talented man. I lost touch with him a couple of years ago, does anyone know if he's still around.

Something I've only rarely used and seem to encounter situations that deem them suitable even less than I recall. Maybe it is more puddles than pits these days as suggested.
They can be sensitive, tho no more so than a driftbeater, or floatledgering nd can't easily be used to position a bait above the bottom as is an option with the slider.
Maybe they hark back to a solution for the times we all, except for the elite, had just one rod to do everything.

Derek, you have a pm.

I have used sliding floats in the past but I don't really like using them unless I am fishing at a distance.

I will usually be expecting bite indications at any depth as the bait sinks and so I much prefer using a rod of between 15ft to 20ft; counting each shot down on the float as it settles, and using a much smaller and more sensitive float than a slider. Using a sliding float just doesn't give me this option.

I don't fish any waters that are deeper than about 12 to 14ft anyway so a longer rod does everything I need without the need for using a sliding float.

Keith

Thanks for the excellent answers guys and your experiences of using ledger floats, much appreciated.

Tony sorry can't divulge too much, just to say that I still have the original float and like all good inventions, it was born out of necessity at a time when I'd never even heard of ledger floats while struggling to find depth. It was conceived on the canal of all places fishing variable depths amongst sunken rubbish and since has been used on the A1 pits and a couple of resis over the years including my own club water which goes to around 30ft. Imagine a slider float but without a stop knot that locks onto the line when it touches bottom and sits upright just like a waggler. Its a bit on the bulky side but its just a prototype that can be scaled down easily enough should it ever be commercialised.

Probably not considering the current way people are fishing.

A little story for you.
I will always float fish wherever possible as I love the method and it keeps me busy and alert. So a few year ago I was sat fishless on the canal like you do for what seemed like an age, so I decided a move was in order to a little area on the far side opposite the towpath some 400 yards further along. I'd never fished it before but it always looked liked some roach might hold up there out of the way of the narrow boats under the cover of some thick vegetation, bulrushes and collapsed walling. I proceeded to fish shallow using a little peacock float and spraying maggot over the top. Within 1/2 hour or so I'd managed to catch a couple but I realised they were only taking them on the bottom but the depth varied considerably. It was a nightmare having to adjust and cast to the exact same spot so I got to thinking about how to fish dead bottom when you don't know the layout of what's down there and accuracy of casting to the same spot wasn't working out too well. This is where a pole might have come in but it was about 18 year ago and I didn't own one.
Still don't use the two I have now as it happens!!!

Anyway as time progressed and with little less that 2 hours of daylight left, I increased the hook length which now meant that my hook to float was about 12" which was fine in some areas but if a little out, it was too shallow or it was too deep and snagged up again! All I could do was pull for a break and tried a little further to the left, then to the right, a bit further out, a bit further in got snagged again and had to pull for another break. Fed up and knowing the fish were there and not able to catch shallow I had to draw them out into open water and fish deeper where they didn't want to be. The depth at where they were held up was their haven so it going to be easy.
Anyway long story short, I got to thinking about depth and how difficult it is to hit dead bottom each time using rod and line not knowing what's down there should your cast be off a little bit like mine when the wind gets up.

I remember saying to myself; "somebody should invent a float that just touches bottom each time"!

Hmm, wonder what that would look like?
Hang on a minute Chris..... never mind someone, that someone should be me, its my problem so get it sorted!

Ironic really (Product development being my field), it was probably just me looking for a little divine intervention that day lol

By now I'd been fishing for about 10 hours straight and not much daylight left and I was losing tackle badly so had to draw them out. I decided to leave a breadcrumb trail to follow from the snaggy area into deeper open water towards the middle which had a depth of anywhere between 3-5ft (more rubbish down there as well). Anyway the plan worked and I caught a few more before it was time to pack up.

It was a very frustrating day but I was excited as it produced a problem which I could probably solve myself on the next outing... given a little bit more thought!

I must admit I've seen Polaris floats in tackle shops but never used one , they always looked like they lacked sensitivity

Lord Paul of Sheffield said:

I must admit I've seen Polaris floats in tackle shops but never used one , they always looked like they lacked sensitivity

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Looks can be deceiving. However, they are quite strange in use and can be a complete PITA at times.

Chris,
if you ever get anywhere beyond early prototypes, please give me a shout. I'd be very keen to give one a whirl.

I've got a strange Cralusso thing that is fished without fixing according to diagram. Never tried it tho.

sam vimes said:

Chris, if you ever get anywhere beyond early prototypes, please give me a shout. I'd be very keen to give one a whirl.

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A buddy of mine has seen it in practice and he wants one too, so that's two people lol

The designs pretty much there already to be honest Chris and the engineering is pretty much standard stuff. I just wish the demand was there mate.

rubio said:

I've got a strange Cralusso thing that is fished without fixing according to diagram. Never tried it tho.

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This one?

Cralusso Zero Slider Floats | Ted Carter

robtherake said:

This one?

Cralusso Zero Slider Floats | Ted Carter

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Interesting, it looks like it works in a similar way to the polaris.

A tackle shop near me that closed last year had some unusual floats they were if an antenna type the bottom eye was fitted so it projected out about a quarter of an inch and at 90 degrees to the float, similar to some top and bottom sliders there was a second eye about 2 inches up the body similar to some pole floats but offset by 90 degrees in relation to the lower eye. This meant the line formed a helix around the float body and bound against it when the line was tightened. I was going to buy some to try but the shop closed before I could.

Ray Roberts said:

Interesting, it looks like it works in a similar way to the polaris.

A tackle shop near me that closed last year had some unusual floats they were if an antenna type the bottom eye was fitted so it projected out about a quarter of an inch and at 90 degrees to the float, similar to some top and bottom sliders there was a second eye about 2 inches up the body similar to some pole floats but offset by 90 degrees in relation to the lower eye. This meant the line formed a helix around the float body and bound against it when the line was tightened. I was going to buy some to try but the shop closed before I could.

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The angle of line through the Cralusso is less acute than other floats of the same type, so there's probably less chance of them hanging up, which can be an issue with the Polaris and Premier Locslide models. Incidentally, if the float starts hanging-up a quick clean of the line generally sorts it out.

Where I find them useful is over areas with variable bottom contours, or where fine filamentous weed covers the bottom and clogs up a legered rig and line. Or if you'd rather float fish and it's really a bit too rough for it. Polaris made some enormous wagglers - the biggest in my possession has a recommended weight of 2 ounces and is stable (and still reasonably sensitive) in pretty wild weather. I've always meant to look out some of the models Polaris made for piking - they look ideal for deadbaiting in deep water.

....and lookee here: it seems as if Polaris are still trading.

Polaris Floats - Polaris Tackle International

But if they're not, you can still get them from Dragon Carp:

Polaris Floats at DragonCarpDirect.com