Being Prepared pt1

So I am sat here waiting for time to speed up and for me to be able to get home and I am thinking about all the things that I need to do when I get home, now some I am not going to share with you, but I am going to cover the sort of preparation that I go into before a match.

I am going to start with some of the general stuff and let’s look at hardware, namely poles, rods and reels and what I do to maintain them at peak performance.

Poles:

I am not renowned for looking after my kit but if there is one thing that I spend a bit of time on every so often it is my pole, every month or so I will take it apart and clean the gunk off all the sections with soap and hot water. Once this is done I will flush the inside out of each section again to try and prevent any bits of grit and gunk from sticking between the sections and possible damaging the carbon.  This also goes for all the top kits and at least once a year I will pull out all my elastics and give the inside of the top kits a clean through with hot soapy water.  Once the sections are clean I will then polish all of the sections to help them slide trough my hands, especially important if you are trying to dag over 100 small roach from a far bank line. I the past I have lost small fish through my pole sticking in my hands or my elastic not retracting back into my pole but this alleviates a lot of these problems.

Another important part of the pole is the elastic, and I have heard many times (usually by people who have something to gain by selling loads of elastic) that it needs to be changed every few weeks or couple of months. This I believe is rubbish, yes if the elastic is damaged or perished then it needs changing but not before.  I check my elastics, solids and hollows by running the most used part (the last 3 feet at the connector end) through my lips to feel for damage, if it is a little rough I will not worry too much unless it is a very important match, if it feels jagged then I will either cut off the damaged bit and use the spare on the winder bung or swap it completely.

The way that I elasticate the pole also helps with fish losses, 90% of my elastics are through a long top 2, use No.2 for small canal roach as it helps stop the fish from splashing and spooking their brethren when you are trying to string a few together. My next is No. 3 again through a long top 2, this when I need a little more power than the no.2 but is still soft enough so you rarely bump fish off on small hooks. I have landed carp to 8lb on no.3 elastic and a 0.07mm hooklength!!  Next step is No.5, this is my ‘go to’ elastic on rivers for rigs upto 2g and bagging bread rigs on canals. I also like it for skimmers on canals, again to glide the fish from in the swim and to try and make it last 1 or 2 more fish. After I go over 2g then I will up the elastic to No.6 to try and strike through the float cleaner or a decent hollow for Flat floating. I also have a couple of top kits with No.5 through a pull bung of some description, for the days that I am using 0.07mm bottoms on commercials for roach and Skimmers.

The next level is hollow elastics and theses are mostly from the Browning Reflex range, I use the pink for commercial silvers and bonus canal fish on caster, Yellow for most of my carp work especially shallow as it allows the fish again to exit the swim with the minimum amount of fuss and by using a puller you can land anything on it as long as your terminal gear is up to it. The blue is used for carp of 8lb+ for general fishing, the green for paste and bagging down the edge. Finally I have bought a new margin pole so that I may be able to extract some very big fish from the margins on Orange Reflex and I am also going to experiment with a solid 16 Cenex elastic as well (watch this space).  My final couple of top kits have yellow and blue Reflex through a tip section, These are for flat float and perch fishing as they are forgiving but powerful enough to set big hooks into a fishes mouth when needed, my favourite is the yellow as that is what I used last winter when I had my 40lb Kennet and Avon bag, That included 3 massive perch that were dealt with no problems.

That concludes my pole, let’s look at rods, ‘what do you need to do to a rod’ I hear you cry, well I like to keep my trotting and pellet waggler rods well-polished on the blanks as this allows the line to flow through the rings far easier. So what, well how often does your waggler trundle towards the chub bush in your swim only for it to drag off line as the line runs off some water on the tip?  It doesn’t happen to me now but it used to years ago, the other reason for keeping the moisture off you rod is that it will let you cast lighter floats further, quite handy on the pellet wag or if trying to mug shallow carp next to islands!!  This believe it not also works for feeder rods but the difference is negligible at distances less than 60 yards. Another thing to look at that is often overlooked on rods are the rings, and it is worth checking all the rings on a rod from time to time for damage and also to give them a clean as a build-up of gunk or a crack on a ring could damage your reel line and lose you a match!

Moving onto reels, these are expensive and technical bits of kit that are full of working parts, I service mine once a year by opening them up and lubricating it in the right places with the correct grease or oil.  If you are not confident doing this then there are company’s out there who will do it for a cost or the manufacturers after sales department. I will again change my line when it needs it, if it has been abused for prolonged periods of time or if it looks/feels damaged. I again try to keep my choices of reel lines to 4 main types: Cenex slow sinking in 0.14 and 0.18 for float work, Cenex feeder in 0.16-0.22 for the tip, Daiwa sensor in 4lb for the pellet wag, 8lb for summer carp bagging on the tip and finally braid for long range fishing on the tip, I have used several and am still to find one that I am truly happy with, currently I am using Drennan feeder braid.

Other things to check are keepnets before any match take them out of the shed and look for small holes that could let fish out or be made into bigger holes by the fish!  Barrows, check the tyre pressures and give any screws a quick splash of WD40 or similar from time to time (not many things are worse than cold hands and a cold stuck hand wheel).  Pole rollers need checking from time to time for signs of damage and to make sure that they rotate efficiently, I am not bothered if they squeak as that tends to put off anglers around you, especially when you start bagging and all they notice is squeak, squeak of the roller.

That’s about it for hardware, I could start going on about cleaning of clothing and luggage etc but that would be very hypocritical of me.

In the next part I am going to look at bait until then 'Tight Lines'.