More tackle talk

For a few years now I've been using leger stems for my eel fishing. I know full well that when the line is tightened they don't stand upright, but once the line is out of the clip they do, which might help the line flow more freely. The way I've been making them is quite simple and so far has withstood casting using two ounce leads. I've tried pulling them apart with my hands and failed so I tested one to destruction using a spring balance which had stretched to eleven pounds when one swivel parted company with the stem.

All they take are a couple of large eye swivels, a rig clip, a length of stiff boom choosing, a buoyant body of some sort and some glue-filled shrink tube.

 

Squash the small eye on a swivel and the large eye on the other. Clip the lead clip to the now small eyed swivel. Slip a piece of shrink on to the boom tube, fit the squashed eye of a swivel into the end of the boom tube, slide the shrink over the swivel body and heat with a heat gun. Push the boom tube through the buoyant body and repeat the swivel attachment at the open end. Push the buoyant body up and the job's done.

Eel fishing is a frustrating pastime and it always gets me thinking. My first tackle modification spurred on by an eeling problem was brought about by my ineptitude at getting the wriggling buggers in the landing net at the first attempt in the dark. I can never see where the net cord is and far too many times I've lifted the net before an eel has been right over it. Give them an inch of tail over the cord and they back out!

I should have thought of the obvious answer years ago. Paint the last eighteen inches or so of the landing net arms white. For good measure I put a wrap of reflective tape at each end of the paint, then applied epoxy rod varnish over it all for protection. So far I haven't had to make any second or third netting attempts.

My second tackle development was to solve the rig storage issue. Coiling hooklinks in grip-seal bags is OK with wire which springs straight, but the hard mono links I use with worm baits takes on a curve. I had been putting a few in a stiff plastic hook packet. They had a tendency to tangle and I thought there must be a neater way. 

Being old I dredged up a memory of an article in a 1970s about using a cigar tube to store hooklinks by putting the hook over the open end and tucking the other end under a rubber band. I found some plastic tube and gave it a try. It was OK but the rubber band was a fiddle to use and the swivel or loop ends flapped about if they weren't all the same length.

Lateral thinking came to my rescue and I tried a piece of scrap Duplon rod handle material and may pins as used on many a flat rig board. The Rick Stick was born!

 

 

 I could just about squeeze 20 hooklinks onto the 'stick'. While I considered putting it in a tube for protection it fits neatly enough in my tackle box without.

 

 

Finding it awkward using my lightweight bobbins (see here) by attaching them to the uprights of the rod pod my current venues force me to use, as the swims are not bankstick friendly, I wanted to adapt the pod so the bobbins were attached directly below the rear rest heads.

I didn't like the price of the commercially available fittings intended for this which attach between the rest head and the buzzer bar. They didn't look very long either. No matter where I rummaged there was nothing to be found that I thought could be adapted for the purpose. Staring at the pod one night hoping for an indicator to move it struck me that the bobbins didn't have to be attached to an upright. A cross bar would do just as well.

I have lots of old banksticks in various stages of decay. One was cut to a suitable length and temporarily fitted to the pod using a couple of hair bands. In practice the hair bands weren't up to much but they let me prove the concept worked. Which it did.

I tidied up the cross bar by wrapping black insulation tape around it and fitting a plastic cap to each end. A couple of Terry (tool) clips were attached using self-tapping screws so the bar can be moved up and down and removed altogether when not required. I would have used nuts and bolts but I had none suitably long. If the screws fail I'll have to get some.

In practice the set up works well. An unexpected bonus is that by turning the clips that the bobbins are attached to round the cross bar I can finely tune the indicators without having to fiddle with the reels. Neat. It's also occurred to me that by attaching the cross bar to the front of the pod I can use the indicators on a drop of almost twice the length of the cords should I want to.

The final (?) mod to the bobbin set up was to acquire some better cord. Entering '1.5mm braided cord' into Google soon tracked some down and had 5m winging its way to me. A big knot in one end to stop it pulling through the hole in the Terry clip and a piece of the magic glue-filled shrink at the other to form a loop to take a clip and everything was complete. The bobbins did their job again, dropping off and the eels taking line freely. As usual my conversion rate was pitiful!

I wonder what I'll be tinkering with next?

Back to basics

Over the last dozen or so years of my intermittent eel fishing I've tried all sorts of bite indication set-ups (apart from float fishing). I started out fishing open bale arms using light weight rear drop-offs with the Gardner clips I use for pike fishing. Then I tried the same bobbins at the front on a long drop and baitrunner engaged just in case.

Next it was short drops and heavier bobbins sometimes even straight off the 'runner with no bobbin. All worked to a degree, all failed to a degree. I know that the 'Rollover' indicator is supposed to be as resistance free as you can get. But have you seen one, let alone tried to set three of them up on a rod pod? I was given one and can't fathom out how the bloody thing works - even after watching a video! Another over complicated angling solution.

One evening when the eels were taking a couple of 'clocks' off the baitrunner I had a flashback. Way, way back my eel bobbins were a short length of balsa dowel with a hair grip glued in one end and a screw eye in the other. On the ends of the hair grip prongs were glued plastic beads. They'd started life being used off the front rests as old school bobbins for tench after I got fed up of Fairy Liquid bottle tops! I couldn't remember having dropped runs using those. I'd actually found them a few weeks previously.

 I reckoned they worked because they were lightweight and that meant the clips didn't have to be set very tight to prevent the bobbins falling off the line. This has always been how I like my drop-off bobbins. The trend in pike fishing for heavy bobbins to show slack line takes results in the clips having to be tight, offering more resistance on the more common run. Drop-back indications have never been much of a feature of my piking, and even less of my eel fishing. If you use cord to attach the bobbin to the rear rod rest you can see a slack liner even with a light bobbin. That's another story though.

I was sure I could make a more modern version of this indicator if I could find the right components. The clips would be the hardest part. Map pins are too short. What about hat pins? They proved elusive with beaded heads, but a bit more internet searching turned up something similar. Florists pins.

How to turn them into a clip was the next, easily solved, problem. Initially I thought of simply pushing them into a polyball or similar.  A bit crude. My old friend glue-lined shrink tube came to the rescue. Put two pins in a bit of tube, grip the ends in a pair of pliers and blast the tube with a heat gun. I did some dry tests to determine how much of the pins should protrude from the shrink tube before getting the heat gun out.

The MK1 bobbin was hastily assembled from a polyball and a swivel which was also heat-shrunk onto the pins. This was just to use as a proof of concept. 

It worked a treat first time out. I had a take on one of the other rods that was dropped. It was a quiet night and that was the first take. I swapped the bobbins over and when the same bait was taken again the bobbin softly fell from the line and a 'proper' run progressed. The eel was hooked, landed, weighed and returned. Success!

Now to neaten the bobbin up. Quite simple. Chop a clip down with a pair of side cutters, glue the clip into a polyball with a swivel opposite and iMK2 was ready for action.

White polyballs show up surprisingly well after dark but I thought an isotope would be easier to see. Clear shrink tube came in handy for this. I shrunk the isotope onto the nylon coated wire I was using as a 'cord'.

The wire isn't ideal for the job. It doesn't tangle like a thin braid can, but it's difficult to get straight too. I know exactly what I do want for making the cords, it's level fly line. The original bobbins had that and it's flexible yet tangle proof. Alas I can't find any in my boxes of 'stuff that might come in handy one day', and it seems rather expensive to buy to use about three feet!

The MK2 bobbin plus isotope worked a treat. Even with the alarms switched off a falling isotope catches the eye. They looked a bit unrefined though. Not that it bothered me. I still thought I could improve things.

More searching on-line and acrylic tube was discovered. Marvelous. A 150mm piece of 4mm inside diameter tube was cut into three equal lengths. A swivel had one eye squashed and covered in the magic glue-filled shrink and then glued into one end of the short tube. A cut down clip would go in the other end. That would look a bit unsightly so to cover the eyesores I wrapped some reflective tape around each end of the tube. To stop the isotope rattling about - and to centre it - I poked a piece of foam into the tube. A dab of hot-melt glue secured the clip in place and the MK3 bobbin was ready for action.

You might ask why I didn't just use the old bobbins in the first pics on this page. The answer is that light as they are, they're not as light as the ones I've made. Simple as that. For the time being I have 80lb Kevlar braid attached as the cord until I find something better. In practice it works as well as the originals. Despite appearances the clips can be adjusted. Pulling the beads apart slackens them, twisting them around each other tightens them. The aim is to have them as slack as possible. Using 50lb PowerPro on the reels I'm finding them to work great. The line release is 'soft' for want of a better description, and I'm getting far more actual runs than the other indication methods gave me. So far!

That's the story of one of my eel fishing improvements this season. Stay tuned for a couple more! You'll have to wait a bit longer to see if I've actually caught anything....

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Hard Nylon eel traces

Making hooklinks on the bank, in the dark by the light of a headtorch, isn't the easiest thing to do! So much so that I've packed an LED light to put on my camera tripod for my next session. It'll only be needed if I run out of the spares I'll be making at home!

Years ago I bought a spool of Mason Hard Type Nylon to make leaders when I was fly-fishing for pike. Leaders, not tippets, the flies were attached to wire which was attached to the leader. It's strange stuff. Very tough, very stiff, and very 'coily'. It's also difficult to get hold of in the UK. Mine came from Veal's, and while they still have it listed on their website it is currently out of stock and has been for some time. There must be an alternative but buying unseen could lead to a lot of money going down teh plug hole. Is the stuff carp anglers use for Ronni Rigs the same? 

Other than the nylon everything else is simple. One hook, two double barrel crimps, a rig sleeve.

 

Not all of the tools shown below are essential. In fact the crimping pliers are the only ones you cant do the job without. I use the lighter to put a blob on the tag end of the nylon before pulling it snug into the crimp at the hook. It isn't a big deal to leave it sticking out without a blob. Crimped correctly the line won't slip. The tag end can be left longer at the loop end as that will be sleeved over.

The nail clippers are what I use for trimming all nylon lines. they're especially good on tougher and thicker monos I find. The knot testers are used to test the connections, and have the added benefit that when doing that the curve in the nylon is pulled out.

 

 

Just a close up of the jaws of the pliers. 

 

The crimp should be placed 'crossways' in the groove of the pliers, so it squashes the two barrels together flattening each barrel. Ideally the crimp should stick out of the jaws at the loop end to give an angled transition for the nylon. I suspect this is more critical when using heavier gear to big game fish than it is with this sort of tackle. The crimps I'm using are very small and fiddly enough to align correctly in the pliers without having to get a bit to stick out - the crimp length being the same as the width of the jaws. There's no chance in the dark! To give an idea of size these are one inch squares on the cutting mat.

I'm using quick change swivels on the end of my mainline hence using a loop on my hooklinks, but a swivel can be attached just as easily. Crimping is ideal for people who have to have all their hooklinks exactly the same length. Much easier than trying to do that with knots - although having a loop at one end works.

These are only used with worms or other non-fishy baits. Anything that I think has a greater chance of being picked up by a pike is fished on wire.

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The Upside Down Pike Float

Making my foamy drifter got me wondering what other floats I could make from the orange eggs. The obvious one would be a tubed 'bung' shaped slider, but I don't use those much these days preferring bottom end floats for still water piking from the bank. My fat cigar balsa floats have done me proud for a long time now. However they have been in need of a touch of varnish here and there, and I also wanted floats I could stick starlights in for fishing after dark. I'd made some before but I like tinkering. When I saw starlight adapters at Keith's Fishing Tackle I ordered a bag of 100.

I wanted my new floats to show up better than a 'bung', which sits low in the water. So I flipped the eggs to have the pointy end up. Not being sure if this would work I made a prototype from an old polystyrene bung and gave it a try. It did work. Now to get the foamy ones made.

All very simple. One egg, a length of float cane or skewer, a swivel, some glue filled shrink tube, the optional starlight adapter, glue and the paint marker I used to colour the drifter body. The photos should explain the construction. 

 

The large eye swivel was used because I have a lot of them. They have proved easier to get on and off the clips I use to attach them to the rig though. I think that's mostly down to the gauge of wire used for the eye than its size. Although they are a bit easier to grip with cold, wet fingers.

Two things became apparent with this float. Firstly it sits higher in the water than I'd expected so it would be more visible with a bit less black. Or no black at all - but floats don't look right in one colour! Secondly the starlight holders are a bit finicky. At least with the starlights I used one end is a tighter fit than the other. The slack fit can be too slack.

My previous starlight floats had used the clear tube which comes with the starlights to attach them. That was always a snug fit. Gluing a tube to a dead starlight seemed an easy way to do things. For maximum light emission I left the tube standing proud after gluing the assembly into the top of a foam egg.

 

 

 

 

This worked just great. It was a bit untidy though. For the Mk2 I pushed it all the way in to sit flush, and painted a lower waterline.

 

For increased visibility, which I don't really need where I've been fishing, I stuck a dead starlight in a small foam ball. It was just something to play with if I'm honest! It has got me thinking about push-in vanes for a drifter though!

I think that's the end of my foamy egg float experiments. For now... It's a pity the orange ones aren't available in more sizes like the green ones are. Watch this space for green foamy ball and egg adventures!.  

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When you're on a roll

Knowing that the weather was set to turn wet for the weekend and that I'd have no time to fish next week I made sure I got a session in this week. Luckily the UPS van turned up nice and early on Thursday so I was able to get a decent length session in. I was going to fish into dark anyway to spin it out so I filled a flask, something I've not bothered doing recently just to keep the weight in the rucksack down. Fred was grateful for my effort.

I wanted to give the drifter another try out, so made my swim selection with that in mind. With a bait out close in to my left and another a bit further out to my right I started drifting. Looking at the chop on the water the float should have headed straight for an ice feature I could have inched it back from. What the wind looks like it'll do to a float rarely turns out to be what it actually does. 

Instead it spent a lot of its time blowing the drifter towards my right hand float. Eventually the wind swung a bit and I got the float just where I wanted it. Then the left hand float dipped and started to move off. When I got to the rod the float stopped moving. I have a suspicion that it was my clod-hopping tread that disturbed the pike. I checked the bait and swung it back out, a little further along the margin this time.

There's been heavy overnight rain which had made the banks muddy and slippy. The more I trudged around the swim the muddier it got and my boots were soon caked in clag.

Not having felt the hooks I had a feeling the pike would still be hanging around and up for a second bit at the lamprey head. For once I was right! This time the float kept moving and I connected. By the time I'd netted, unhooked, weighed and returned the fish the drifter had gone off course and was round the back of my right hand float.
 

It took a while to sort the mess out but at least the wind was taking the drifter out nicely by then. I was pretty confident of more action but none came my way. With an hour and a half of daylight left it was time for a move, and a switch to three static baits to take me into dark. The new swim was quite sheltered from the chilly wind and offered me three nice locations to place baits. It was, however, on a bit of a slope. A bit of a very slippery slope. Moving the rods I felt my feet lose grip and with as much grace as an ice dancing superstar I dropped the rods and pirouetted round to keep myself upright.

After a while I'd worked out where the safest route round the swim was in case I had to leap to the rods to deal with a take. The knowledge only came in handy when it was time to wind the baits in and go home.

I had a lot to do on Friday, but I was still itching to get back for more pike action. And to have another play with some floats I'd made for fishing into dark. Unusually I managed to get my jobs done in good time and was looking for a swim by two. Ideally I wanted the wind behind me but it had swung through almost 180 degrees overnight and I couldn't find a spot that would give me both a good drifting line and let me put bottom baits where I felt confident. One of my jobs had been to buy a clip-lid box to put the drifter in. It did a good job while it languished, unused, in my rucksack.

For some reason the swim I was in, with the wind blowing in to me at a slight angle, felt right. Slowly retrieving the far mackerel head a decent looking pike turned behind it about a rod length out. That made me think that a drifted bait might have scored if all the pike were as active as that chaser.Even so I resisted the urge to move. Instead I took the float and leger weight off the rig and cast the mackerel had around the swim for a few minutes. It looks strange, but I've caught on 'wobbled' half baits before. When the pike didn't reappear I reattached the bomb and float and recast it a bit further out. I'd barely sat down when the float was away.

Winding down I felt the fish. Then it came adrift. Winding the bait in I could see the trace had got round the top treble and the points were facing backwards. Bugger. Never mind, that could have been a different fish. My confidence rose another notch.

It was about an hour later the left hand float, which had been drawn back a few yards from where it had been cast, wobbled over and the line went slack. When I picked the rod up the float was moving away steadily. This one got hooked. Then kited into the reeds. Back in open water it stayed deep then made a run from the net. Time to get the mat, sling and scales out. Laid on the mat for a snap I could see from the patch of what look like regrown scales behind the gill cover that this was a repeat capture of a fish I'd caught last month. It had lost a couple of ounces - although that could be a weighing discrepancy.

Being unable to think of a better swim to move to I decided to break with my usual habit of moving regularly and chose to stick it out in this one until I'd had enough. It seemed like I'd made the right choice when the right hand margin float began to behave oddly. It was just moving away when I got to the rod when... It stopped moving. I'm becoming convinced that when fishing these margin baits a rod length away I am running the risk of spooking pike as I approach the rod. Again my thinking was that the fish hadn't felt steel so might come back. There wasn't enough time to move swims before dark fell anyway.

The sun was low and casting a warm light on the reeds when the right hand float made off more confidently. When I set the hooks I could feel that the pike was somewhere in the submerged willow branches. Once out of that potential tangle area it fought pretty well, but not being a monster was soon laying on the unhooking mat. Not a fish I recognised this time. This rig was the one I'd had the drifter on and instead of my usual quick change lead set up I'd simply attached the bomb to a paper-clip through the top eye of the trace swivel. Coming through the branches the paper-clip had done it's job as a weak link and the lad had gone.

After dark I felt like there might be another chance but after half an hour that feeling had left me, so I left the pike and the pit for home. I've caught a few pike from this place which have required the use of a headtorch for me to see what I'm doing when unhooking them. Stopping into dark hasn't paid off though. Maybe I need to stop more than an hour after sunset? Or maybe the pike don't feed in the dark. Having caught one when eel fishing in the dark I'm not too sure. I might give it another try when I can get back. It would allow me to make later starts and have a decent length session when the UPS van doesn't turn up early.

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Never say never

After my last session I'd been thinking about piking quite a bit, the idea of covering water with an off bottom bait had inspired me to get making prototype drifters (see previous post) and also mess about with some other float ideas that are probably superfluous. I'd even stocked up on deadbaits as my supply in the freezer was limited in both variety and quantity. Reluctantly I'd bought a pack of lamprey halves. I much prefer being able to chop a whole lamprey down to a size I like, and keep the tail sections short enough to discard as they don't fill me with confidence when used on the hooks, But no full lamprey were to be had. So it was Hobson's choice.

 

With a replenished freezer and new floats to try out I couldn't wait to get back to the pit. Ideally that would have been on Thursday when it was dry and warm. With the temperature set to drop for Friday and with showers forecast it wasn't my preferred day. My couriers had other plans, so when they arrived late on Thursday for a collection it was Friday or not at all.

Not only had the temperature dropped, the wind had picked up and was adding a considerable wind chill factor coming from a roughly northerly direction. The rain had gone by lunch time but a shower was predicted around two. Oh well. I took the chance of leaving the brolly at home and after I'd decided where to go left my waterproofs in the car. 

My plan before setting off had been to fish the far end of the pit as that would give me good long drifts to test the float out. I had a short wander before loading my gear on my back and saw that a closer swim might also offer a drifting opportunity. As it's a swim that has been good to me before it seemed like an idea to start there. By quarter past one I had two float legered baits covering the margins and a third drifting about further out.

I hadn't bothered putting my fresh packet of lamprey in my cool bag as I was sure I still had a head section left from before (I put the bag in the freezer complete with contents after every session), but added the pack of small smelts I'd bought to go under the drifter. When I got to my swim I discovered the only bits of lamprey I had left were two tails I'd cut off. One of them got stabbed with my bait knife and the other rod got a decent mackerel head.

The drifter  float did a great job. Alas the smelt wasn't to the pike's liking. I'd forgotten how much work is involved with fishing a drifter. They never go exactly where you want them to, and in a slight cross wind have a tendency to drag in to the bank you are fishing from. As that could have resulted in the float going behind a point it restricted my range. The rain arrived a bit late, at two thirty. It wasn't heavy and by standing behind some shelter I only got damp. When it turned to hail I almost wished I'd put teh brolly in the quiver. After fifteen or twenty minutes the shower had blown past and I was starting to dry in the wind. It was time for a move.

Again I thought of a productive swim that might let me get a drift in and by three I was set up with the left and right margins covered with the bottom baits and the smelt drifting over the site of a lily bed. After twenty minutes the mackerel head rod was in action. Another confident run that, as last time, saw a lightly hooked double in the net after a short but dogged scrap. This time the hooks hadn't come out in the net but the bottom one was only just inside the mouth.

The macky head was replaced with a tail section and I went back to working the drifter around a few features. By four it was time for my final move to a swim where the drifter would be no use. It was wound in and I started to unship the float in readiness to switch to a bottom end cigar float to use with a float legered bait. I was just about to swap the one ounce lead for a two when an alarm sounded. The useless lamprey tail had been taken! This fish was again lightly hooked and just as the first went mad in the net after a more lively fight. It didn't quite make double figures but it did make me consider stopping where I was. I recast the lamprey tail and carried on with my rig change. I'd move regardless.

When I got to the last knockings swim I wasn't sure if I could face an hour or more with that icy wind blowing straight at me. As I had the place to myself it would be an ideal chance to try a swim I'd never caught from, and had only tried briefly once before. It had the added benefit of being nicely sheltered. I retraced my steps and started a slow set up.

In my early piking days I was always in a rush. I'd turn up and head straight for a swim I'd had in mind before I got there. Then I'd sit it out all day. I didn't want to spend any time without a bait in the water. As I got older and (hopefully) more experienced I slowed down and became less concerned with keeping a bait in the water. I now know that spending time thinking about where to fish is usually well spent. Ten minutes in the right spot with one bait is worth more than a full day in the wrong place with four baits.

The new swim had a lot going for it. A marginal bush overhanging the water, like so many swims here, and marginal reeds, like so many swims here! The lamprey tail went by the bush the weight of the mackerel tail was used to cut across the wind to reach some far reeds, and a smelt went to my left close in.

I'd not been there half an hour when the lamprey tail, yet again, was taken at five fifteen. Maybe it's the cold or the time of year but the pike are doing a lot of bulldogging, staying down and shaking their heads. I had no idea how big this one was. When a Pike opens it's mouth during the fight it acts like a drogue and makes for a lot of resistance making the fish feel bigger than it is. This one was another ten pounder. I thought it might have been the same one I had last month as it had a similar look to it's teeth. However, it was chunkier and a comparison of the photos showed differences.

The last lamprey tail got hooked up and cast out to the same spot. By now it was starting to get dark. Not as soon as last week though. At this time of year the speed with which daylight hours lengthen is picking up. I could still just about manage without my head torch when an alarm sounded a warble accompanied by a crackling sound. At first I thought the alarm was playing up again. Seeing a float steaming out from the bank suggested it wasn't! This one had taken the smelt, a bait I have almost as much faith in as lamprey tails. It was obviously the smallest of the session. Again only just hooked, it wasn't going to get weighed but as the sling and scales were out it got the treatment and proved to be heavier than I'd guesstimated.

I put the last smelt on and had a final cast. By six it was too dark to see the farthest float clearly so I wound the rods in and drew a surprisingly successful afternoon session to a close. F\our pike, three on baits I don't rate! An added bonus was that by hanging on the rush hour traffic had thinned and I didn't have to queue at the junction with the main road. Happy days.

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