The Alternative Angler

Never mind smelling the flowers, don’t forget to take time out to see the satirical side of fishing life and grab a laugh along the way as well. So here’s a regular column from Kevin Perkins to remind us that life is for laughing at, or taking the p*** out of, whenever we can.

Have you ever bought an item of fishing tackle, particularly accessories, that didn’t quite live up to your expectations? Have you used it perhaps just the once and then thrown it in your tackle box, never to see the light of day again?

Tackle Review Revisited

As an additional service to FM members I will take it upon myself to carry out random checks on tackle reviews as seen in various angling publications. Some of the items mentioned require, in my humble opinion, further investigation.

A recent review caught my eye, extolling a top cover for your rod quiver to give your valuable tackle protection from damage – Excuse me? A full-length cover for your rods, hmmm… now isn’t that already available in several other forms, and don’t they go by the name of rod bag or holdall?

I am all in favour of enterprising people recognising and supplying niche markets, but I wasn’t aware that you are now able to create the niche as well!!

Following this theme, should we not now see a market opening up such items as waterproof bivvy and umbrella covers to protect said items from the elements?

Line lay could have been better on a 95 quid reel…..

I also noticed a long-term test of a reel costing £ 95. The tester commented that “the line lay could have been better” Perhaps it is just me, but if I am paying nigh on a hundred quid for a reel, I really don’t want something that is still in need of improving. I think I will wait until the manufacturers have sorted that particular glitch, thank you.

With these reviews, particularly ‘group’ tests, there always appears to be two or three items which, in the reviewer’s opinion, are so flawed in some way that they should not even be considered. Is there tackle on sale today that is really that shoddy?

Must-have tackle recommended by ‘experts’

Many years ago I rashly purchased ‘must have’ tackle based on glowing recommendations from ‘experts’ Let me tell you about a couple of those items:

A well-known tackle maker launched a new kind of bite indicator for legering. This consisted of a plastic frame some 12 x 15 inches, housing a swinging indicator arm that stuck out of the top, which you draped your line round. This arm was tensioned with what looked like pole elastic, wound around a cam device at the bottom of the frame. If you had to make adjustments to the sensitivity of the indicator, the tension had to be increased/decreased by twiddling the cam on the frame. As this was, of course, sited beyond the end of the rod, you had to hang out over the water’s edge to get to it.

Why would you want to adjust it? I hear you say. Well, if the contraption got wet (water off the line, rain, etc) it would lubricate the arm, necessitating a re-work of the setting. You were then forced to get down on your knees, grab hold of the frame in one hand and play with the cam thingy with the other. You can now imagine that having reached out and made a grab for the frame, it was now not the time to find that the bank stick it was attached to, was not very firmly driven into the river bed.

How many anglers have pitched head-first into the water whilst twiddling? We may never know, although I didn’t seem to recall a warning to this possibility in the instructions.

The Newark Needle Float

Then there are some tackle developments which take a giant leap forward and then just seem to lose momentum. Our older members will recall the ‘Newark Needle Floats’. Here was a radical new float fishing ‘system’ offering a quick-change facility and no tangle quick-change non-toxic weights.

In addition they offered far better bite indication, partly due to the density of the material the floats were made of. Tests graphically demonstrated that the float went down quicker, and stayed down longer than conventional floats. And that was the problem, to me anyway, in that they just disappeared!

There was no bob, bob slide away, and they just seemed to vanish from view. You would blink or look away for a split second and the float would be gone! It would then re-appear in a spot where you weren’t looking. Perhaps some small antennae device would have made life easier.

The Leger Pin

The Needle float spawned another device, the ‘Leger Pin’. This was basically a stainless steel knitting needle attached to the line by a float rubber at each end. Its benefits included no tangles and quick-change facility. The drawbacks, which were not mentioned, included the small matter of bite indication, not facilitated by the fish having to drag the whole thing off the lake bed before you got any hint of anything happening.

You may wonder why I know so much about these late but not lamented products. Is it my near photographic memory? No, it is not. Up until last weekend said items were still in my tackle box. Like I said at the start, bought on a whim or recommendation, used once and…….

But you haven’t got anything like that in your tackle boxes – have you? Well don’t hold your breath. Christmas is just around the corner and even if you would never think of buying something you wouldn’t use, there is nothing to stop a well-meaning relative doing just that.

The adverts are already appearing in those magazines you get with the Sunday papers. Beer tankards with the legend ‘World’s best fisherman’. Hip flasks engraved with huntin’, shootin’ fishin’ scenes, and personalised with your initials, of course. Ties decorated with fish, or flies. Those all in one ‘survival’ tools which always include an implement for removing fish scales. When exactly was the last time you de-scaled a fish while you were out?

Me neither.

You may even be lucky to get one of those complete fishing sets, packed in a neat plastic wallet and called ‘Fish-N-Machine’ or some such. One rod and reel, one spinner and one float, to tackle anything with fins. What more could you want, and why aren’t you grateful?

So don’t feel left out, you may just end up with some angling accessory you don’t want or can’t use after all!