Has float fishing becoming a dying art?

[Tigger]

Float fishing rivers? No I don’t think it’s a dying art, there are plenty of trotters out there who are keeping it alive.

 

Stillwater float fishing is a different matter, hardly ever see it these days and that’s such a shame because like a lot of anglers my introduction to the pastime was watching a perch bobber or quill desperately hoping that the next bite wasn’t another minnow. It’s a skill in itself and I don’t have it, end tackle and presentation are so different to what you might do if sending a float down the river.

 

I’d love to be able to float fish a lake properly.

There's plenty still float fish still waters and rivers round here Chris. Infact i've been doing quite a bit myself .

[Dave H]

Maybe it's not so much the float but the float rod. With a restriction on 12lb minimum line many use an avon rod. Landing what seems to be an average size carp of 20lb - 25lb and with much weed in the margins in summer to land one on a float rod is a skill and patience that many won't have.

 

I know too that in my other sport that flying all over the world especially Bahrain and America that i now return to the bird i flew in the first case and enjoy it more than ever.

 

Not saying that in fishing i have done the same but i have noticed the old man in me also comes into my session fishing as i used to be happy in a brolley overwrap but now its got to be loads of space for my slippers and dressing gown

[Andy Macfarlane]

A teetotal Scot! Whatever next

 

And along comes another....lol....I hate it as well.

[Steve Walker]

My local tackle shop has a handful of fairly crude float patterns and multiple brands of every obscure bit of carping terminal tackle you could think of.

[Steve Walker]

 

I couldnt tell you exactly what they are used for but roach fishing they are not, and especially on 6-12lb mono straight through to an 8 with 2 maggots

Refugees from any-method trout fisheries from what I hear - bubble float, treble hook, powerbait, apparently.

[RUDD]

See plenty of old guys who after many years of angling still can't set up a waggler properly.

It would seem many didn't learn the art in the first place.

A pet hate is the Whoose sound of some anglers rod caused by trying to cast too light a float, having too heavy line or using an under filled spool.

[arbocop]

Dying art? Never. I float fish and free line most of the time and reserve legering for winter chub. As for being an old fart - I just posted this with my new iPad and I didn't need the instructions!

 

I have so many floats that I never use it is quite ridiculous. However, I wouldn't get rid of any of them! When I was a kid I was seriously addicted to floats. I used to believe that the float would catch you the fish and as a result I had what I referred to as bream floats and tench floats as if they had some ability to catch me the fish I used them for. it was only later that I realised it was the method of fishing that they enabled not the catching of individual species.

 

Surely pole fishing is almost entirely float fishing - that is certainly not a dying art but that too has become very complicated with the advent of carp fishing on the pole. In my day you had a crook at the end with a long dangly bit of elastic connected to the end. Nowadays it's all complicated elastics and bungs. My first - and last - pole was so thick at the butt I couldn't get my hands all the way around it and it was only 8metres. I also had to point it in the air so that the tip didn't dangle in the water. The pole floats we used were either normal floats but smaller, or fancy continental jobs that we didn't understand how to use. Modern ones seem to be along the same lines, but the carp fishing has generated a wealth of pellet floats and meat floats etc. it's almost as if it is the same as when I was a kid.

 

Mike

[Mat Hillman]

I Recently tried replenishing my stick / wire stemmed floats the thing I noticed instantly was I couldn't. None of the shops near me stock any range. One shop dug out a box of old image floats that nobody brought then and I didn't want now either (he still wanted £2 a float )

 

Try eBay. There are sellers on there with better float ranges than any of my local shops.

 

Mat

[Piperspruce]

I'm still very much in love with using a float. I'm not brilliant, but that's partly why I love it. For such a simple thing, its actually pretty hard to do right. So as well as enjoying using a float, for me, there is also something new to learn, and aspects to improve upon.

[Andy_1984]

A teetotal Scot! Whatever next

 

I was mad with it when i was younger (Ha, listen to me I'm only 28 ) now I hate nothing more than feeling even half cut. ive had about 3 pints this year I just enjoy the taste of a really cold becks.