Leaderboard

They just chuck in a few more bearings and thinner plastic for the body and a quick paint job to catch the eye .Modern reels are vastly better machined than old ones but the basic designs the same ,it's a device to store line and catch the eye of the gullible neophiliast nothing more (ok I googled) . Bearing overkill is a moot point I have had many tangles where you set up a rod and put it on its rest with the handle 'just so ' and the damn thing is so loose its handle insists in moving by itself spoiling my day .I am the boss if I want my handle horizontal it's damn well going to stay where I bloody want it multi step anti reverses help (about the only good invention along with bait runners since the 50's) but that's not the point . Luckily my pocket decides what's bought not the lust for the new fashion that rarely lasts 6 months before something with an 'X' or two or an agressive name like beast master or ripper on the label crops up to tempt the foolish .If it ain't broke it's fine imho Thinking about it what HAS changed there's been a few fads like line going through the rod and closed face reels but technically all that's changed isn't design but materials that have. But graphite rods are just an refinement of fiber glass not some tech that's changed tackle since the 50's or before. You could even say an intrepid elite was a bait runner it allows line to be taken with the spool closed but then if you loosened the clutch they all do .All inventors have done is turn a line holding drum 90 degrees with the means to put the line on it for storage and release ,basically my old turn spool spool alvey is it's dad .

Had a few hours on Sunday evening on our clubs Estate Lake after Carp; but it was unusually quiet as there are usually a few anglers there on a Sunday evening but there were no other anglers there. Perhaps there hasn’t been many Carp coming out recently I thought; although my son had a mirror of just over 27lb only last week plus we both had Carp between 11lb and 17b last week so it can’t be all that bad. Anyway I set up my two rods in the swim below. Unfortunately I was right and it didn’t seem to be fishing well, however just before I started to pack up as the light started to fade after resigning myself to having a blank (which is fairly rare for this lake) one of my alarms finally sprang into life and a Carp in the very low teens was the result. I will be back on my favourite stream after Barbel next week and onwards so I will be giving the estate lake a miss for a while Keith

Last night my son and I had a couple of hours at one of the clubs match pools which the club had converted to a fishery from cress beds back in the early 1930s. We both fished the waggler and took maggots and sweetcorn with some small feed pellets. We were hoping for some Tench and Crucians plus some smallish Carp (up to the high singles) however it turned out to be Bream, Bream and even more Bream; mostly from around a pound up to a couple of pounds in weight with a few of around 12oz; and by the time we packed up; (when we couldn’t see our floats); we were absolutely caked in horrible snotty slime. Im not a great lover of snotties however I did have one Carp plus one Tench so it wasn’t a complete failure re my targets. One thing that happened while I was setting up; I got my line wrapped around and under my reel spool so I removed the spool and started to untangle my line when I felt my line start to straighten and my rod start to bend where I’d accidentally hooked a smallish Carp or a Tench on my ‘bare hook’ at half depth (I’d not even plumbed up yet); and I had to frantically try to untangle my line; reassemble my reel and then try to start playing it in, however by the time I had tightened up after untangling and reassembling my reel it had weeded itself solid so I had to eventually pull for a break. Keith