| MARK HODSON | |
An angler since he can remember, Mark Hodson almost literally lives, eats and breathes fishing. A match angler in his youth, fishing for the junior Starlets, he turned to the dark side and joined the ‘floppy hat’ brigade in his college years. He worked in the tackle trade for ten years, on a part time or full time basis at Chaplains, one of Birmingham’s busiest tackle shops and managed the specialist department there for two years. He now fishes just for fun, although the ‘floppy specialist hat’ still dominates his angling, his writing concentrates on getting the maximum enjoyment from your angling and trying something different from the norm. |
THE OTHER SIDE OF THE COUNTER
This article came about as the result of numerous conversations I’ve had with fellow anglers who knew me when I worked in a tackle shop. I’m always amazed how the average angler knows so very little about what actually goes on in a tackle shop on a day to day basis. Many think it is a ‘bed of fishing roses’ and your days are spent talking about preparing and going fishing. In fact in my experience it was the complete opposite, and even though I spent more time than ever with a rod or hook in my hand, it was invariably in the shop rather than on the bank. I worked in a tackle shop on a full or part time basis for over ten years, doing in that time every task conceivable that needed to be done for the shop to run well. So, for all those who wished they could work in a busy tackle shop, or think they would like to one day, here’s a typical week in a tackle shop worker’s life. Monday On opening the shop just before 9am the first job is to check the bait fridges, just in case there has been any disasters whilst the shop has been shut on Sunday. Everything would be fine 99% of the time but occasionally one of the fridges would fail and you would open a fridge to find gallons of maggots or pinkies climbing the walls in a bubbling sweat of ammonia, not nice, especially if you’ve got a hangover! At the shop where I worked we had one walk-in fridge, with a 160 gallon capacity (that’s 1280 pints of maggots), and two wardrobe style fridges each with an 80 gallon capacity. So at full capacity we would carry 2560 pints of maggots in their various forms. Next job is to get some of each type of bait (reds, bronze, whites, mixed, pinkies, etc) on the hand riddles to take any skins off, that’s dead maggots, and then onto the mechanical riddle to take the old maize out. Then it’s in with some fresh maize and onto the counter ready for the customers. With a bit of practice you could get all the different baits decently presented onto the counter by 09:30 am. Time for a quick cuppa and a chat with your colleagues about Sunday’s fishing successes or disasters and then for the rest of the morning all the staff would be pre-occupied with tidying or replenishing the points of sale and displays after the madness of Saturday, which is the busiest day of the week. Also during the morning if the bait levels had run low after Saturday a top up delivery would arrive, which would have to be cleaned, but more about that later in the week. After your lunch break, which was as long as it took to eat it, or if it was very busy, whilst serving, the manual work kicked in. This time was spent bagging groundbait, pellets, unpacking and pricing the tackle deliveries, and all the other menial tasks that need to be done that have nothing to do with fishing. Also on Monday afternoon most of the sales reps would try to call at the busier shops like ours to take our weekly order, as this was the only day when we would have few enough customers to have the time to talk to them and look through the catalogues. At 5.30 pm it’s time to get the bait back into the fridges and shut the shop. Tuesday Same as Monday really, but the first major bait delivery of the week would arrive which would see us through to Thursday dinnertime. At the height of the season we would have up to five deliveries a week to ensure a good supply of fresh bait, and we used three suppliers to achieve this. When bait arrives at the shop it comes in 6 or 8 gallon trays. The state of the bait at this stage is nothing like you see presented on the counter. The bait at the farm is taken straight off the feed, mixed with sawdust or maize and taken to the shops. When the shop gets it there are still pieces of carcass mixed in with the bait and the smell is like nothing else on this earth. If you had a cold the smell would unblock your nose in seconds. If the bait had been bred on fish carcasses then it was even worse, but mostly poultry carcasses were used. Also the bait would have been dyed hours before arrival at the shop so gloves were essential when handling the trays and bait unless you wanted bronze or red hands for the next week. The dyes were supposed to be non – carcinogenic but I always, and still have my doubts. Many a time I have had to stand at the sink scrubbing my hands with bleach to try and get them looking half normal before going out on the ‘pop’ after work. Explaining to a lovely lady the reason that your hands were a shade of nicotine yellow was because you worked with maggots all day wasn’t the best chat up line in the world I can tell you. The bait on arriving, as long as it isn’t needed immediately, gets a lot of maize put in with it and it gets put in the fridge to cool. This gives the maggots a chance to clean themselves off in the maize and reduces them to a temperature where if you spill any when working with them, and I have seen 8 gallon trays spilt everywhere before, you can sweep them up before they crawl off into every nook and cranny. Once cool the dirty bait is put on a mechanical riddle which takes the dirty maize and sawdust out and then onto hand riddles (the large round ones that fit over ground bait buckets) which removes any dead bait, bits of carcass and any other oddities that have managed to creep into the tray of bait on its journey to the shop. It’s then back into to fridge so the bait can clean itself off on some fresh maize again, after this the whole process is repeated and then the bait is ready for the counter. Imagine doing this in the 30 degree heat we are experiencing at the moment, I used to sweat buckets! On Tuesdays most of our wholesale customers would come in and buy their gear for the week. As we were a large shop and bought in bulk, paying immediately to achieve better deals from manufacturers, the smaller shops, market stall holders and some fisheries that sell tackle and bait would buy off ourselves as it was often cheaper than buying direct from the manufacturer themselves. Also some shops can’t obtain accounts from some suppliers as their nearest competitor already has one, so this was a way to get around this as well, and most of the time they would get it cheaper than their nearest competitor by buying of us. Also Tuesday was a good day for the really exciting jobs such as attaching seatbox straps, putting the caps on rod tubes and dressing the tackle and window displays. Wednesday I always had Wednesday off as it fell halfway through the week, unless it was the start of the season or the week of the NEC show when we worked a seven day week. The start of the season used to be a great week to work in a tackle shop, apart from you can’t get time off to actually go fishing! When the closed season was abolished on stillwaters it lost a lot of its magic but when it was still enforced it used to be like a madhouse in the preceding two weeks, as everyone left it to the last minute to replenish their tackle and obtain a licence; yes, tackle shops sold licences when I worked in one. We all hated writing them out and as we sold BAA cards as well, one lucky sole was nominated for the day, usually to write them all out at the end of the shop where the pike and sea tackle was sold as this was the only area with standing room! The last year before the closed season was abolished we sold over 9000 pints of maggots in the opening week, the next year it must have dropped to half that amount. When the NEC show started it coincided with the shops 60th Anniversary and so we had a big splash in the weeklies, and did so each show thereafter, having all the major angling celebrity’s come down one at a time each day of the week to meet the customers. As a result every year at the time of the show angling clubs would arrive at the NEC by coach and then come to the shop to buy all their gear in bulk as it was a lot cheaper than their local shops. This was before they had retail stalls at the show. It was bedlam again but the visiting anglers would spend a fortune on tackle that was cheaper, or they couldn’t obtain in their part of the country. It got to the stage where they used to spend so long in the shop we started providing the bigger coachloads with refreshments, but they used to think it was great and became good mail order customers as well. The only other time of the year I would not have Wednesdays off was about September/October when most of the major manufactures had their trade shows. I use to love these shows where I could view all the new gear and play with it before it hit the shelves the next year. I would see the new rods and reels nearly 12 months before the general public, and be wined and dined for the privilege of doing so; it was great. At these shows we would view the products and commit ourselves to orders for the next twelve months, so there was a serious side, and the money had to be spent wisely as you didn’t want to buy 200 rods if that model was going to be a slow mover and you had 100 left when the manufacturer dumped them at rock bottom prices in a year’s time. When I wasn’t working, Wednesday was spent not fishing but with my wife (girlfriend at the time) but I occasionally got in an overnight session before work on the Thursday. Thursday Very busy day as not only are most anglers thinking about their weekends fishing but they are also popping into the shops to get the gear and bait they need. Also this was the major bait delivery day where the first of the weekend’s bait, over 2000 pints on a Thursday, had to be cleaned, which meant everyone went home smelling like a maggot farm. Also, at least three 25kg bags of brown crumb, and one of white, red and yellow had to be bagged up into smaller bags ready for the weekend rush. Once the trout pellet revolution started, a bag of each size and a bag of fishmeal had to be done as well. Friday Another big bait delivery of at least 1500 pints at the height of the season arrives on the morning and Friday afternoons were mad as the Land Rover, Rover and all the other big manufactures closed for the weekend and all their angling employees descended on us to get their gear for the weekend. Unfortunately the days of seeing the shop full of Rover uniforms will have now gone but we would get them all within half an hour of each other as they came in on their way home, the banter as they wound each other up before their weekend’s matches was fantastic. Friday afternoons would see the bloodworm and joker delivered ready for the weekend which had to be checked for quality, split into matchpacks and dampened. Saturday Saturdays just flew by, it was always so busy, no matter what the time of year. The most important thing was to get the bait you needed for Sunday put to one side, before the shop opened, so as sometimes happened you didn’t get caught out when we sold out on some really mad days. I have known on some Saturdays come 4pm there wasn’t a maggot left in the shop. When you went out the back it was like a scene from a busy restaurant kitchen like you would see on television, with staff yelling for the Saturday lads to get more bronze on the counter or refill the groundbait stands as they were bare. At 5.30pm the shop would shut and all the staff would grab the gear they needed for Sunday’s fishing. The Saturday lads never got paid as they inevitably spent it all on tackle, whilst I would spend at least a third of my weekly wages on bait and tackle. That then was the end of the week, off home to get ready for Sundays fishing or as was more often the case straight to the bank for a night/day session, and on Monday it all started again. So that was the average week when I worked at Chaplains Fishing in Birmingham. It is no longer Chaplains but has now been taken over by WMAC as the previous owner Colin Chaplain took well deserved retirement. Working in a tackle shop is not what everyone imagines it to be. If the shop is run properly you do not have time to stand around and talk about fishing all of the time. There are occasions when it is quiet when you do get the odd chance, but most of it is hard graft, just like working in any other shop except this one sells fishing tackle. If anybody wonders why I think Chaplains was such a successful tackle shop, it was because the owner Colin Chaplain wasn’t a fisherman, he never went fishing at all, which will shock some. What he was though, was a very shrewd businessman which is why we could sell cheaper than all of our competitors and offer customer service first and foremost. It has been over six years since I last worked in a tackle shop which brings me back to the opening paragraph and the reason I have written this article. People often ask, “Why did you pack it in, it must have been the perfect job for you”? I must admit it very nearly was, apart from I didn’t get that much opportunity to go fishing and it wouldn’t pay the mortgage. Eventually even the most fanatical of anglers like myself get fed up talking about fishing all of the time. And then there were the customers, oh my god, some of the customers! But I’ll save them for another day. |
