Elasticated Whips, how do you get the fish in?

[Newt]

Would a rod & reel be out of the question for your partner and the lad?

[Ken L]

I used to do a lot of my river fishing with a 7 or 8m pole fished line to hand.

T'was always fun seeing the line/elastic stretched right accross the river with a decent chub on while the traditional pole guys looked on bewildered.

Nobody seems to have asked the obvious questions:

What size elastic are you using?

What BS hooklenth are you using?

How many sections have you got elasticated?

Is the elastic properly tensioned?

and

Is the elastic just a single length knotted in or is the back section doubled?

 

Get the kit balanced and short elasticated poles are great fun to fish with (although 10lb carp are pushing it) but get it wrong any you will fail to set the hooks, bump fish off or be incapable of bringing them to the net.

 

For most of my river fishing for chub and silvers, I used to use a No8 elastic and 1.1 or 1.7lb hooklength (some people are smilling now because they used to use Bayer Perlon as well) but for comercials with carp, you'll probably need to up that a bit - and it doesn't really matter whether you're fishing LTH or with a short line.

[Angly]

Would a rod & reel be out of the question for your partner and the lad?

 

After I've just forked out for the elasticated whips too bloody right it would!

 

Seriously though, we all thought we'd wait until they were both fully self sufficient with the whip (tackling up, plumbing depth, landing, unhooking) before moving up to rod and reel. My partner is actually keen to upgrade now, but then young Master Angly would create a stink!