Has fishing changed that much.....

Looking back over half a century of fishing,It got me thinking how much tackle has changed especially rods. The early sixty's saw me peddling to the local canal with a cane rod that was so heavy tied to the crossbar with a duffel bag on my back holding every other piece of kit i owned including a tiny chair that folded out that clipped open with a cloth seat. You know the sort. The rod changed to a solid 9ft fibre glass on my tenth birthday, still heavy. And then to a MATCH rod, 3 piece 12ft hollow glass when i started my paper round..

Fast forward a few years a mini instead of a bike and the specimen hunting as it was called then started.

I had a pair of fibretube 1 1/4 lb test rods that were used for barbel,chub,bream and tench.

1 3/4 rods were used when carp fishing and 2lb were used for piking. Even when i fished lake cassien in 1986 the rods were 2 1/4.

Fast forward to today and there seems to be so many different float rods. barbel rods are up to 2 3/4 and carp and pike rods up to 3 3/4.

Has it changed that much.. What do you think.

I think the principle is pretty much the same but the gear, and the general attitude, has changed considerably which in turn is dividing tackle down to such specialist and specific purpose kit in many instances.

Your example of the float rod is typical, we now have so many variations on a theme... I'm not knocking it but I don't subscribe to it.

My stick rod for the river is the same rod I use for the waggler on stillwater and I'm happy with that, I've got a couple more float rods for different purposes which I can justify to myself and that's repeated throughout the other types of rods that I own.

I'm not knocking the opposite of that, it's just not for me that's all.

I think there's much less compromise these days, possibly driven in part by the marketing men and possibly by necessity for those that want the very best for each specific purpose and quite justifiably so in practical terms if you're setting your stall out to catch large, elusive fish at extreme ranges which justify that specialist gear.

The multitude of off the peg rig components are another example whereas it was often a case of cobbling together and making do with what was available and the convenience of it all is something attractive to those with less time due to the pace of life these days.

You still need a line and a hook so the basic principle stays the same. As Binka mentioned I think convenience is one thing that has changed. You can buy stuff off the shelf now to cover virtually any situation.

In terms of the heavier rods nowadays I think these are driven by two things, the first being the popularity of bolt rigs meaning that rods now have to chuck heavier leads than they did in the past. And second, peoples obsession with distance. Every ones seems to want to have a rod that can cast to the horizon even if the fish are in the margins.

In reality I cant think of many occasions when an angler actually needs something like a 13 foot 3.5lb TC rod. I doubt many anglers even have the physical strength to compress the blank enough on the cast to actually make use of the extra length or strength of the rod. The fact is they could probably cast as far if not further with a 12 foot 2.5 TC rod but the heavier rod sounds better.

Philip said:

In reality I cant think of many occasions when an angler actually needs something like a 13 foot 3.5lb TC rod.

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I used 13ft 3.00lbs rods for two seasons because they were the tool I needed to do a job for me on a pit I fished, did they catch me fish I wouldn't have without them? who knows but my fish per session was at the higher rate for the water. when I stopped fishing the water they were sold, they were not particularly nice rods to catch fish on.

Getting back to the original question imo very little has changed as far as methods go although some may have been improved on, an example is "the method".

Tackle is something that has changed hugely and has been driven imo by tackle marketing men and the availability of good tackle at the cheaper end of the market enabling anglers to own rods that are designated for this or that job, whether less rods would suffice is another matter, years ago my carp rods were also my barbel rods and the same rods were used for pike which they were totally unsuitable for and resulted in me breaking one on the cast

Not much at all really but the amount of must haves/don’t needs certainly have. Tackle as changed but discounting overstocked carp waters fishing its self hasn’t.

Tackle has improved and the fish have changed a lot with the explosion of commercials.
More carp, Ide, F1s and the like. Stick to natural waters and it's not so noticeable but a few escapees have infected the odd natural I'm sure.
I personally have gone back to fish as I always did after a short while getting lost fishing for the commercial oddities.
Man made fisheries are mostly the direction that fishing has gone and I can't see it altering in the future.
When fishing was just rivers or canals with the odd reservoir I'm sure there was a lot more skill, that's not saying there are some very skilled anglers that fish commercials.
The thing is who cares who fishes for what so long as we all do as we please.

rayner said:

The thing is who cares who fishes for what so long as we all do as we please

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Spot on.........................

Funny that question should come up today..... Yesterday we couldn't get a peg on the lake, and we were wrong side of town for most waters. We decided to give it a go on an out-and-out commercial nearby. Yes – fishing has changed a lot! The usual “donut” and “canal” ponds, the banks and site generally barren aside from some clumps of taller grass. It obviously needs some business acumen to develop these places – why not pay at least some attention to the landscape? There are more trees and bushes in my garden then were on the site. Diggers on site were working on the next hole to be added. Self-hooking methods were evidently popular, taking some of the strain off the attention span. Species that were formerly considered shy and careful feeders – like roach – are driven by the competition for food to hurl themselves at any bait small enough, even on gear heavy enough to land carp. A four or five pound carp would once have been an enviable catch; I can't help thinking we've devalued the fish by expecting to catch one of those every few minutes, as some blokes were.
We were fishing near the carpark/cafe and were struck by the procession of overloaded barrows and trollies – surely, never has so much gear been needed to catch such easy fish? We caught a bunch of small tench and some “silvers” (“silvers”- ouch), fought with a few huge carp - you win some, you lose some - and enjoyed the sunny afternoon. But as for changes, I'd say this stands to fishing as a shopping mall stands to a city.

What has changed is the way anglers are given a code on how fish should be looked after when we land them,weigh them,photograph them and returned them,amazing really,because as far as I see it there were more fish years ago,many waters having only specimen fish like carp,tench,bream and cats available,waters with large numbers of average sized fish are less common,odd that as we should have killed them all,or if we did,with such improvements numbers should have recovered.

Barring cyclical or man made changes to a venue, fishing really only changes if you actully want it to. Yes, gear evolves and gear fashions change, but that doesn't mean an individual angler has to go with that flow. There are plenty of old boys out there fishing the same venues that they always have, with the same tactics and the same gear.

I prefer to embrace changes. I like trying new gear in the endless pursuit of the "best" rod or reel. I like trying new venues and tactics. I like targeting different species. It's at least half the fun of the fair. I find doing the same old thing, on the same old venues, gets rather boring in the end, regardless of how good the results are. However, in saying that, the vast bulk of my current angling is pretty much as it was thirty years ago, just with far, far, better gear.

Two changes apart from tackle and venues, the weather and water management.