Page 4 of 14: Gear. Rods, Reels, Bite Alarms etc.

Gear 1976 - 1989/90

We'll be off at a slight tangent for this page ... keep up if you dare ... 

... the following section may well be very, very, very boring, more boring than anything that's preceded it so far. Don't say that you weren't warned. Of course you'd already be aware of the boredom aspect anyway if you were silly enough to wade through what I wrote in the previous three pages of nonsense? If you are below forty years of age then much of this next bit may well resemble the antiques roadshow on a night dedicated to angling, but with me being quite old, well I quite enjoyed finding all of my old gear online even though I'll openly admit it might not make for the best reading unless you are of a certain age and like me had forgotten certain bits of gear.

One of the more surprising things that I found whilst delving through my old photos was how laying eyes on my old gear brought back so many vivid memories. It's odd how these tools of the trade, things that I didn't treat as precious in any way at the time, caught my interest when looking back. I swear that after all these years that I could easily bring back to mind the feeling of the rods and reels, the sound of the buzzers ... it was bizarre. What occurred in my head was that I tried to get a timescale of when I bought and used each item, partly due to the detective work of trying to put a date on an old unlabelled photo and partly because of some rather strange feelgood factor? I can word the emotion in no better way than that. Okay, I did initially get a bit muddled about certain things. My old reels were one thing I got wrong in the first Blog I wrote (mixing up Cardinal 55's with 57's) but I later ended up going on-line where I found photos of pretty much everything I used to use which helped my on-line Colombo impersonating work no end. Some items I found were for sale on sites dedicated to antique fishing tackle and it was this that gave me a bit more clarity and helped to eradicate the original errors. Going back over three decades or more did involve a fair bit of this so-called detective work on my part, something I've already touched upon in the earlier pages of this Blog, and it was all good fun for a while as I searched around on Google looking for all of my old gear, each item putting a broad grin on my face every time I found what I was searching for. I then decided to try and screenshot certain bits and pieces but being semi computer illiterate this meant that I had to go to YouTube so as to learn how to even take a screenshot ... if nothing else it helped me to learn how to do this. Anyhow, here it is ... the tale of old gear and how it was used in the early days ... 

Yawn ... Zzzzzz Zzzzzzz Zzzzzz .... 

Rods:

In 1979 when I dedicated almost my entire free time to Carp and Pike fishing, all of our Carp rods were made from awful floppy fibreglass. We knew no better so thought no ill toward them. These early Carp rods were often quite heavy, hugely unresponsive and were most often too short for big pit fishing being about 11 feet long, the longer Carp rods were a thing yet for the future. Most ledger rods were about ten to eleven feet long in the fibreglass era, that was just the thinking at the time. in fact no doubt it be be a necessity brought about by the floppy nature of the material, the shorter the stiffer perhaps? A 12.5/13 feet long fibreglass Carp rod would have been a very heavy/sloppy item. Then in the late 1970's carbon fibre came into play ... then boron ... then moron, but enough about me. Things like chemically sharpened hooks and decent bite alarms were still well in the future, well just around the corner perhaps when looking back from the modern day but for my timescale they came out of the blue and were utterly revolutionary. In truth things soon changed and the gear we used when I stopped fishing in 1990 still looks to my eye pretty much the same as now (apart from the reels perhaps?) as the gear had come on leaps and bounds in that one single decade. It wasn't like that when I first started in the mid to late 70's and to illustrate the point, you'd still see the occasional older dude using Split Cane rods back then, okay only every now and again but it did occur. In fact I remember going to fish a lake in Cornwall in the late 1980's and saw some old boy still using a spilt cane rod even then. 

My first matching pair of Carp rods were just awful things. They were all eleven feet in length, made out of fibreglass and I usually bought them as blanks and built them myself. I did buy a matching pair second-hand (from Mick Wilkinson) before buying my first dedicated pair of shop built Carp rods in about 1980. None of them were any good in retrospect. I did get my hands on a pair of carbon fibre blanks in 1981 but these were no good at all for long range fishing, so by extension they were never any good for use on many of the swims on Fordwich. The blanks themselves felt really stiff in the shop but once at home and fitted with rings and a handle they proved to be a bit floppy and being only about two pound test curve they were too lightweight for long range stuff anyway. I didn't get any even half decent big pits rods till 1982 and I continually upgraded until I bought my last pair in 1986 or '87. 

We used to have many light-hearted rows about gear, the main cause of them being rods and the main protagonist being my mate and Carp fishing rod evangelist, namely Geoffrey Bowers. My early years marked the oncoming of Carbon Fibre rod technology for Carp rods, so anything made out of floppy old fibreglass was either given away or just thrown out after a year or three. The first Carbon rods to hit the market were more aimed at the Trout or Match Angler initially, they were available during the 1970's and the next step was to make match rods out of carbon but still no Carp rods were available for many years. In 1982 (I think) Geoff and I, drove to Hertfordshire (a famous shop run by Allan Brown in Hitchin) to pick up our rods of choice, namely a pair each of hand built 2 lb 10 oz test curve compound taper Rod Hutchinson's. Now these were long rods at the time, I think they were 12 feet long, very long for Carp rods back then anyway and were a vast improvement of what we'd been using previously. They were also beautifully built things, being hand made using Bruce and Walker blanks and they not only were able to cast a reasonable distance due to being able to handle a two and a half ounce lead but being of a compound taper design, they were still very pliable and therefore nice to play fish on. Anyway, back at the rod argument wotsit thing mentioned earlier, at some time during the early/mid 1980's another carbon fibre Carp rod hit the market, namely the Titan. They were horrible fast taper things, stiff as a broom-handle, they were cheap both monetarily and quality wise by comparison with the feel of the hand made Rod Hutchinson rods and these vile Carp poles were the bane of Geoff's life ... he hated them! The ongoing banter often offended owners of these rods and then turned to out and out rows, it could be hilarious at times mind you to any bystander, all very entertaining when Geoff got in full flow anyhow. After using Rod Hutchinson's rods for a year or more in 1983 I then bought another pair of long range Carp rods, both twelve footers bought once again from Allan Brown in Hitchin. They were still compound taper design but these were slightly stiffer through the middle but lighter and with them I could cast miles. Eventually, at the end of my fishing days, I bought a pair of Kevin Maddocks endorsed 12.5 foot 2 pound 14 oz test curve rods built by Simpsons of Turnford, and these were absolute beasts. They again were still compound taper, quite soft and powerful in the mid range and wow would they chuck a bait out if you gave them a bit of welly. I also used various other Carp rods for shorter ranges or smaller pits, but the three types mentioned were the main ones that I used for the long range fishing on Fordwich. It's odd to think that I only ever bought about five sets of Carp rods for use on Fordwich. I bought others too, just for use at shorter range venues. 

I found this in an old photo album,  an ancient 'cut and paste' gag aimed at the Titan rods mentioned above. The man in the photo is my old mate Roger Stanger, a great bloke was Roger even though his taste in Carp rods wasn't quite as good as his taste in music. I saw this young impressionable lad go from someone with a casual interest in music to becoming full on Prog/King Crimson mad person within a few short months as I remember it? We once went to a Yes gig at Wembley one night, got caught in an enormous traffic jam and missed the first hour of the concert. We left in good time too but the traffic on the motorway was at a standstill for hours as I remember it. Fortunately being a Yes concert, the gig was over three hours long, so we still got our money's worth and though I usually hate drum solo's I can still remember an impromptu solo from Bill Bruford that night that darn near blew me away. We almost had a huge accident on the way there, as once the motorway traffic jam relented as due to our lateness Roger drove like James Hunt on the way to a free Champagne party and we kept on re-hitting lots of static traffic whilst we were still going at break neck MPH and ended up bouncing down the hard shoulder at some very silly speed. We were awfully fortunate not to hit anything I can tell you as the car was properly out of control. I can remember it like it yesterday. Sorry about the above photo Rog, it might still be kicking around in your memory banks perhaps as you will have seen it before I assume? Old Roger did me a great favour one day. A new angler turned up at the lakes a bloke we called 'weird Kev' who like me was a Deep Purple nutcase. As it turned out he was aa really good drummer and when Roger found out he booked a hall in Sturry, picked me and Kev up and listened as we jammed about two hours of solid, very loud Deep Purple songs. He did this totally off of his own back too, a very kind gesture and one that I've never forgotten.

My old pair of cork handled Rod Hutchinson 12 foot Carp rods here seen doing their respective jobs on the Richies in 1981. I did love those cork handles. I did also buy a third one but that one had one of those horrid in vogue period moulded plastic handles on it. I know it's an awfully boring photo but it's my Blog so I'll put on it what I want.

More dullness in a single image ... I then bought these for the 1983 season ... not as nice as the old Hutchinson's, just better if that makes things any clearer? They were 'better' only in the sense that they cast a wee bit further. The swim is the old Mound in case you were wondering and I assume from a session in either October or November of 1983. Of course the Mound has since be re-landscaped and built out into the lake and re-named as Woodman's for whatever reason? It will forever be 'the Mound' to us old timers.

Reels:

At this time in history the main specimen hunter type reels were ether made by Mitchell or Abu and only the ABU's were totally without fault. There were other reels available but they were usually awful, the line laying was all skew whiff, the bail arms would snap shut when you cast out, they often felt cheap and not very smooth on the retrieve and the bail arms felt as if they were hewn from rolling up a couple of Kit Kat tin foil wrappers and held on by a plastic drawing pin. Mitchell reels were not too bad, but only for general close to medium range fishing. They were well designed, had a nice edge on the spool allowing smooth casting but were let down for long range Carp fishing as if you gave a large lead a good whack out then the bail arms were untrustworthy and could snap shut half way through the cast. The spring used in the bail arm design weren't up to the job with the Mitchell's either and often wouldn't properly engage if used for long periods of time, the ABU's had double bail arm springs which always worked. The Abu's were just of a far higher quality reel top to bottom, inside and out, the brass gearing being utterly magnificent as was the clutch and drag mechanism. The rear drag could be useful when self hooking rigs were used and I often used mine in bait-runner style, casting out, loosening off the drag and just applying pressure to the spool with your hand, clicking off the clutch and tightening the rear drag when you had a take. It was a fail proof method on open water like Fordwich. The Abu reels were indestructible too, built like a tank they were. I had lots of these reels, mostly Mitchell's initially (300's, 410's and an 810) also later on my favourites, Abu Cardinal 55's and later on Abu Cardinal 57's. At some time during the middle 1980's a company started selling Baitrunner reels designed specifically for Carp fishing and of course everyone started to buy them, but these first generation reels felt a bit cheap and nasty. It's like anything, they see a gap in the market and get the things to look nice but build them out of cheaper, softer metals and plastics, it was this cutting of the corners that ruined the product. As soon as you saw the way the original Baitrunners laid the line on the spool you could see they weren't very good, but that aside the actual baitrunner facility was a very good idea and it did work but I'd apply the analogy that an old banger will drive you to the shops but it's far better to drive there in an Aston Martin isn't it? That just about sums it up I think? I might come across a bit of a gear snob here, and perhaps I was, but I still stand by what I just wrote. I got taken in one time. I walked into this shop and saw there a pair of reels with enormous deep spools, perhaps the only thing lacking with my much beloved Cardinal 57's? The larger and deeper the spool the better they would be for long range casting due to less drag, as less spool lip gets exposed once you've past the 80 - 100+ yard mark during a cast. Anyway, I bought a pair and within just a few months they already felt like I'd had then for a decade or more. They were just cheap and nasty, they just weren't built to last. I do admit to being a bit anal about my gear even though I didn't treat it as precious. To my mind what's the point of using a tool that threatens to let you down? If it loses you just one fish then for me that's one fish too many. I used to see so many anglers using old line, blunt hooks etc and just couldn't get my head around it, that's just the way that I was.

Two old Mitchell 300's ... we used to use reels like these (as well as 410's and 810's) during our early ledger and Carp fishing days.

By the early 1980's we used these almost exclusively, ABU Cardinal 55's. I can still bring to mind the clunk of the bail arm shutting, the feel of the ratchet and the rear clutch all these years on.

My favourite Fordwich long range reels, without equal back in the day, ABU 57's. They were very hard to get hold of back then and it took me (or Geoff actually) ages to find a pair. I see that all this old gear is collectable nowadays as some people will collect anything of course. My favourite thing for collecting are ... er um ... Fender Stratocasters! 

Line and other bits and pieces: 

In the early years we used either 8 lb or 10 lb lines but once we learned to fish at longer ranges we then started using very light main line with a heavy shock leader. In some of the swims it was often essential to be able to cast 130 yards or more to where many of the fish were once the Carp started to get wary of the angling pressure put on the water. We used to go down as light as using a 6 lb main line at times, using 18 lb shock leaders for the long range stuff in years when the weed wasn't too bad (or else we'd use 7 lb mainline but never anything heavier) and never encountered any problems as we (unlike some) learned to tie proper knots and keep a constant eye out for line wear. I used Sylcast monofilament almost exclusively back then, mainly as you could buy it in 1000 yard spools and though slightly wiry, it did come off the spool nicely for long range casting once given a light stretch and the wiriness meant it didn't chaff too much and wear on the gravel bars or whatever it came into contact with once in the water. It was just a very high quality and affordable line, it had to be, or else we'd have used something else. I also had many spare spools fitted with heavier line for the mid range stuff but you'd never need anything any heavier than 10 lb strain on Fordwich in any of the swims as there was no proper snag fishing as such requiring hit and hold tactics. I'd always like to stretch my line (you were forced to with the Sylcast) and would also always put a light solution of washing up liquid treated water on it so as to help it sink and remove the drag. It was quite possible with a two and three quarter or three ounce lead to cast over 150 yards in favourable or even flat calm conditions and whilst some people might scoff at this, I know it's right as we used to go practise casting at our local playing fields and measure the casts out. There were very few people at the time who could cast properly, and for the most part it was a would be a waste of time even if they could as very few people ever used a catapult to anywhere near its full potential. Baiting up was always a problem when you fished the Riches or the Mound swim as the lake is 250+ yards wide there and it was often the case (though not always) that the further you could chuck it the more fish you'd catch. My method was to practise, practise and practise some more. We had two lots of huge playing fields nearby where we lived, so it was always easy to get a bit of casting practise in during those early years. There were inevitably days when you could cast further than you could bait up due to headwinds and on such occasions I'd drop one rod short amongst my freebie baits and the other as a single offering as far past them as I could get it. Common sense had to be applied and if at some point of the session the wind was favourable for long range baiting up then I'd pile in as much bait as I dared. If it wasn't, then I didn't ... it's not exactly rocket science is it, but I used to wince when I saw people dropping most of their free baits miles short or in a different postal code of where they were casting their hook baits. I used to like baiting an area as early as was possible after arrival, trying to keep the baits on rough lines, well as best as I could anyway? I used to envision a largish area of the lake bed being scattered loosely with baits and hoped that the Carp would just following these baited gravel bar lines up or down until they noticed your hook bait. The gravel bars were easy to find on Fordwich as the islands alongside the open water were just shallower gravel bars on top of which trees and bushes grew which showed the direction of the bats and were used for alignment.

Boats were not allowed on C&DAA waters at the time, so all you had to get any free baits out at range were those high pressure black window hunting style catapults which could propel a large hard boilie in excess of 130 yards in good conditions for such things. Any new catapult elastics had to be thoroughly prepared before use by stretching the elastics and working on the leather slings to soften them up and get them pliable. This could be achieved by just playing around with them by hand or should you get a really thick type of leather, even by chewing it until it was soft enough. The quality of every batch varied and cheap elastic had to be avoided like the plague. I was really hot on my catapult elastics (does it show?) and often worked on them till they were dead right but even then you'd need at least two or three catapults on the go at any one time just to have one or two that were in peak condition when one inevitably snapped. Most people didn't understand all of this and suffered because of it. The baiting was never properly accurate even by applying my overly anal standards to the procedure and I was quite happy to get the baits within a twenty yard radius or line, chuck lots of boilies out there and get the Carp scurrying around looking for them. Often was the time you'd catch a fish and see it pooping out your bait so it obviously worked.

The new anglers just don't know they are born where gear is concerned. When I first started fishing even things like torches were absolute rubbish and could never be trusted until the invent of the maglight and even they were utter pants by comparison with some of these new fangled L.E.D. lights available today. The batteries back in the day were beyond your wildest dream for awfulness, often you could see even newly fitted Ever Ready's dying within minutes of switching them on. Even once Duracell's hit the market the battery life wasn't enough for the power that the bulbs sucked out if them. They needed changing so often that a modern day angler would just not believe it at all. 

During this period of retrospection I managed to put together pretty much most of my old fishing tackle and gear and bring them to mind. The invention of the bespoke Carp anglers bedchair was a rather wonderful thing and all the more so to me due to my height (and weight) as the things we used to try and sleep on back when we started were pretty awful. Okay, we made do with them, but then again we had too, there was no alternative. For years I used to use the fold up aluminium or steel framed sun lounger. When you first bought them they had a one layer canvas or nylon cover but they weren't sturdy enough and they often used to tear. In the end we worked out a solution which was to buy a spare cover and double them up. They had other problems too, they were too low to the ground due to them having very short legs and the cranked ratchet style angle adjusting mechanisms were constantly breaking too. In time we all got hold of those Kevin Maddocks bed-chairs and though expensive, wow, how much better were they. They were made out of high grade, lightweight aircraft aluminium, had adjustable legs and a solid polythene style toothed plastic ratchet mechanism to adjust them into chairs or flat as beds. Being six feet five tall they were heaven sent for someone like me. They also folded into an amazing comfortable chair too ... I'm not sure who is it was that designed them but whoever it was did a spectacularly good job of it. 

The early bivouacs were of this mushroom design. There was quite a bit of space inside them (I won't allow myself to use the old gag 'there wasn't mushroom in them') but the faults included having a central brolly pole sticking in the ground right down the middle of your ground space, also being light as they were that they were far from being very wind resistant. The very old type of bivvy was made out of a heavy waxed canvas, they were also lower walled and far more stable. The above type was the second incarnation made from lighter, more waterproof close weave nylon and being lighter and taller, they got a real buffeting once the wind got up.

In the late 1970's the only commercially made bivvies you could get hold of were heavy waxed canvas domes that fitted straight over the top of a large fishing umbrella. They were not only heavy but needed constant maintenance, as in waterproofing, and even then the sewed creases always leaked as did any area touching the inside when it was raining outside ... you know, outside, where the rain comes from. By the early 1980's you could then get hold of the next incarnation of the shop bought bivouac. These same domed/fitted over a brolly type bivvies were designed and made by a local carp Angler, Dave Barnes (the man who the Barnes swim is named after, he lived in Margate) only he made his out of a far lighter and more water resistant nylon. These things were incredibly watertight but being lighter and taller they were more affected by strong winds and many a time you'd be stuck inside one of these things hanging onto the umbrella pole as the thing moved around like a bucking bronco when the gales were blowing. It was hell to be honest and on a few occasions I had my bivvy ripped out of the ground on one side or the other, meaning you'd be forced into going outside and re-pegging the thing down, it was awful, especially when it was chucking it down as well. By about the mid 1980's we saw Kevin Nash's solution. By this time you could buy brollies with an angled screw in attachment along the main pole strut meaning that the brolly top could be angled and the pole, usually stuck right in the way down the middle of your bivvy would fit into the ground more parallel to the underneath of the brolly. Nash then sold these triangular type bivvies, which although far smaller were also far more wind resistant. It was similar to using a brolly with fitted 'sides' only better. Once I had one of these I rarely used my larger Barnes bivvy and only then when I knew the forecast was for settled weather and light winds. By this time, using the new adjustable height bed-chairs inside the smaller, tighter and more stable bivvies, you could put lots of bits and pieces underneath your bed-chairs as it was high enough to do so and that extra bit of space made all the difference. Everyone just takes this sort of stuff for granted nowadays no doubt, back in the early days these things were revolutionary. Just to have that added security of knowing that if the wind picked up you weren't going to have to worry about your shelter being blown into the lake was obviously a massive thing for us at the time.

Kevin Nash solved pretty much all of the problems to to having a stable shelter with this sort of design. The above isn't the same as the old one's we used, just the same more aerodynamic triangulated shape. In our day the Club rules stated that a shelter had to be constructed around a fishing umbrella, the above is more of a tent and I assume that the outside pole structure does away with the umbrella? In the 1970's and '80's tents were not allowed as this constituted camping and by extension then any proper camping was banned. In time it appears that these draconian laws were rescinded and tent type structures were indeed allowed. I can see just by the picture that once fitted to the ground using decent tent pegs that the above shelter just isn't going anywhere unless used in hurricane force conditions. 

Cameras:

Then we come to cameras and photos. Photography was a fairly expensive pastime back in my day by comparison with now and pretty much every photo you took was ... er ... what's the right word ... precious. maybe? The inbuilt camera light meters were often suspect and only those who knew what they were doing ever got any half reasonable photos if the light was perfect or they had the nous of knowing how to set any non automatic camera light meter up. You'd also have your heart in your mouth if you had to hand your camera to a stranger in those days as inevitably people wouldn't be all that used to even taking photos (unlike today) so therefore the photo they tried to take would often be crooked or blurry, with you in one corner of the image, with the fishes tail out of shot or something. Another hazard was that these early cameras were also not self focusing, so you were once again at the mercy of the person behind the camera if he even knew how to focus the darn camera lens as well. It was a minefield I can tell you ... real heart in mouth stuff at times. The processing was also a joke. Back in the bad old days of films (or slide which was slightly superior) you'd be forced to fill the film up (you were always restricted to either 24 or 36 photos allowed on each film) and once the film was full, you'd then have to rewind it back into the metal cartridge you loaded inside the camera, hoping beyond hope the film inside which was under pressure didn't stretch of even snap, and then you were left with this small but precious, thin metallic object holding all of your precious Carpy memories inside of it. Then this roll of film would need processing, as in printing onto photographic paper so as to make a photo. The next moment of anxiety came when you eventually got the photos back from the processor and often you'd open up the cardboard envelope to find two or three photos missing, or just a plain black print showing no detail or a half and half photo with a pure white top or corner where some light had leaked in. I had one camera (an Olympus Trip) that I would hazard a guess that I never ever got a whole reel of photos back from. Eventually I annihilated it such was my rage at the vile machines inability to provide me with the 36 photos that I'd taken on that occasion, it paid with its life and good riddance!

The Olympus Trip ... my one was totally unreliable. There was a big TV campaign about these objects of hell at the time, a light hearted advert featuring David Bailey who endorsed this pile of tripe and to be frank, well I got suckered onto wanting then buying one. It said on the advert 'As used by David Bailey' ... yeah, right. One of the world's top photographers uses one of these does he? The TV advert certainly did its dastardly job ... I used one of these things from 1980 till 1983. 

After the properly early days we all bought better cameras (Canon SLR's) and by 1984 I bought and used to carry around two Canon's with me out of fear of some photograph disaster. My paranoia was well founded, as even these would still let you down from time to time.

Canon AE1 Program. After Geoff bought one of these in 1983 I was so impressed with it as a bit of kit that I went and followed suit. The only competitor in this price range back them was the Olympus 0M1 which although having a better five way spot meter device was in every other way an inferior product. 

I then picked up one of these Canon AE1's second-hand to use as a backup. Similar (though older) to the AE1 Program, just a fully manual camera. Wow it's weird looking back at these old cameras, nicely weird I mean. They were just nice bits of kit, all brushed aluminium and top quality glass.

The modern day post digital mob just wont realise just how fortunate you are. As I say, photography could be expensive, you'd have to pay a couple of quid for the film then throw in another fiver for the processing. When you were earning about 80 quid a week, you had to factor all of this in and you couldn't afford to be willy nilly, taking photos of everything like we all do now. After problems occurred when sending off films through the post, we used to pay extra and get our films developed at Boots. You could then pay a little more than the usual flat rate and get them done within a one hour turnaround or just pay less and wait until they were done at their leisure. This usually meant you'd just pay the extra as it was just very, very VERY exciting to get a film full of Carp back from the processors even though you'd be on tenterhooks as you opened the cardboard envelope for that first look. Nine times out of ten you'd be disappointed with the results, the photos rarely reflected the image you had in your head of that day or that fish, and it wasn't as though you could experiment and take two dozen photos as the films held so very few images. 

I sound like an old fart here don't I? There's a good reason for that ... I am one.

Cameras had other uses too ... here I nabbed a very young Kevin Harding after he fell asleep on my sofa after a night out at the pub. He was so sound asleep that I went upstairs and collected one of the kids toys for 'extra added' humiliation. Ah, bless, he only looks about four and a half. We had a nickname for Kev, it was Arnie due to his tremendous lack of physique. He used to have to tie himself to a bank stick when it got windy for fear of getting blown up into any trees or into the watery deep. Kev's about seventy two now I'd guess? Kev got off light. Around this same sort of time in ancient history, big nosed Keith O'Sullivan's Monkey paid a visit to Thanet, drunk far too much, fell asleep in the curry house after uttering his continuous war cry of "where's my stuffed paratha" and later on whilst unconscious in Geoff's front room got attacked by us lot. The annoying thing is that we have no photographic evidence, as his face was a picture after we went at him armed with an array of felt tipped pens and biro He resembled a Paisley headscarf from the neck upward by the time we finished with him. There were better tales of old about this sort of thing, one included a non angling mate of Jock's who had a habit of falling asleep on Jock's sofa after a night out. When old Guggles (as we referred to him) fell asleep, well there was no waking him, he went out like a corpse in a morgue did old Guggles. On this particular night, Jock shaved off both of his eyebrows then got his wife's makeup bag and drew his face up like a Clown. In the end Jock got tired and went to bed, leaving Guggles still unconscious in the chair looking much like Krusty the Clown out of the Simpsons. At some time in the morning, Guggles awoke, walked home through Ramsgate by then 'in the daylight' and once home, got straight into bed with his wife. The first he knew of his facial catastrophe was after he had a good kip, sobered up and noticed his face in the mirror at home. Another good 'after the pub' story involves two of my mates who were brothers. On this particular night they rolled in from the Pub and went straight to bed, they both lived at home at the time. Anyhow, the younger brother said he got into bed but couldn't sleep and as he lay there he heard his elder brother get into bed in the adjoining room and then there was silence for about fifteen minutes before he then heard a commotion coming from this other bedroom? He told me then next thing he knows, there's his older brother wandering past the open bedroom door, FULLY DRESSED in his work clothes! It turned out that he'd gone to bed, fell asleep instantly (as was his way after a pint) then woke up, thinking it was time for work just fifteen minutes later and got dressed etc. I have loads of these old tales. Tony Philips told me  cracker. Not that I was there when it occurred but Tony's place of work had a work's pub do one night. Once the pubs had closed they ended up in the Kebab shop on the way home and after making a purchase and carrying on for home, stuffing themselves as they staggered along, one of the lads dropped a huge bit of Donor Kebab meat on the pavement. Tony reckons he did no more than bend down, pick the dropped meat up 'off the pavement' and stuffed it back into his gob. He then stopped, pulled a face as he tried to chew the item picked up off the ground, before spitting the so-called kebab meat back out onto the floor. When the lads all gathered around and looked down, there on the pavement was a half chewed Cigar Butt! In his drunken stupor he'd mistaken his bit of dropped meat for the butt end of an old discarded slim panatela! 

Ah, here we go, I'd forgotten about this. Our old Premier Baits Bait Catalogues were written (or thought up by all three of us, I did all of the actual physical writing as Geoff's sausage fingers didn't allow such things to happen) by Geoff and I, so anyone who knows us two can just imagine how professional the approach was to this usually pseudo scientific angled, money making side of Carp fishing? Here we had our 1990 awards page (pre-empting Top Gear too) and one of the most prestigious awards in the 1990 catalogue was 'Big Nose of the Year' award. I still have an old Catalogue here and scanned/uploaded the above as not only does it have a photo of Keith Big Nose O'Sullivan's Monkey (as his enormous snout resembled a Proboscis Monkey) but there on the right is old John, a bloke whose surname slipped my mind when I wrote a page in the future that you haven't as yet got to. This had nothing to do with time travel, oh no, this bit was just a late addition, an afterthought uploaded 'after' I wrote pages yet in the future. Cricky, keep up willya?? Look at old Keith's snozzel, what a beaut eh ... they could move the entire Glastonbury festival onto his nose in a heartbeat. It's also far less muddy and the toilet facilitates are far superior too on Keith's nose I am told? Old Keith, what a bloke he was, we first met him at Yateley and he was one of us less than a minute later. I miss old Keith ... and John, they were ten out of ten blokes. The gag with the dinosaur is due to us being in our twenties whereas 'old' John was pushing fifty when we first met and we'd slaughter him about it. He is currently two hundred and seven years of age ... and counting.

Kev wasn't the first to get nabbed of course. Here's me having a light siesta way back in time before Carp were even invented. I got nabbed by Rich Stubbings on my own camera ... he sneaked into my bivvy, nicked my old Olympus Trip and for almost the first time ever it actually took a half decent image. Typical eh ... it did give me a laugh when I got my photos back from the printers, no one had said a word and I had no clue. Note the wooden table, alarm clock, spare butane canister and night-lamp ... all cutting edge stuff back then. I wonder what happened to the pocket of my jeans? I have another football related tale about this sort of thing. Liverpool were playing Dortmund at Anfield one night in the second leg on the UEFA League semi finals. The first game in Germany had been a draw but deep in the game Liverpool found themselves 3 - 1 behind meaning that they needed to score three times to get to the final. Very late on in the game and Liverpool had clawed their way back to 3 - 3 when a certain Mr Degsy Lovren got onto the end of a Milner byline cross and headed what went on the be a very late winning Kop end goal. There was utter pandemonium both amongst the players and the fans and in this mass huddle one of the fans dropped his phone in the middle of this melee with players cuddling members of the crowd. Anyway, later on the phone was found pitch side, this chap got his phone back and once he looked inside it he saw that Mamadou Sakho (one of our defenders back then) had taken a selfie during the celebrations! It always makes me laugh as to that scouser getting his phone back and spotting Sahko's smiling facade staring back at him even if the thought of Lovren and Sahko as a centre back partnership now brings me out in a cold shivering sweat. We ditched the above pair and now have a certain fellow named Van Djik where they used to stand and he is quite very blimmin well awfully good.

Bite alarms:

Bite alarms came on leaps and bounds during my time. When I first started there were two bite alarms you could buy, both were thoroughly awful but one was slightly less awful than the other. The alarms that I went for were called Heron Alarms, most people had them and everybody had many moments when they seriously considered throwing them into the lake. They were easily the most annoying items known to mankind since time in memorial. The saying goes it's the hope that gets you isn't it? Well the 'hope' in this case was that you always hoped your Heron alarms would actually do what it said on the box and alert you to a bite or just stay quiet when you didn't. They rarely ever did, in fact the often did the complete opposite!! We all spent aeons of time tinkering with our Heron bite alarms, bending the antennae so they were more or less sensitive, spraying the innards with stuff to stop the water getting to them or sealing off the outside bit to keep them dry etc and they still always let us down ... always. You got to the stage after many months of persevering with these objects of hate, where you knew they were nothing if not utterly untrustworthy and you'd be as well to tie any cast out lines to your big toe to register a take rather than trust a Heron during a night when you needed any kip. Herons worked by putting your line around an antennae, a piece of sprung steel which when pressure was applied to it by the line tightening, would create an electrical circuit, setting off a buzzer ... a horrible, stinking, grating, annoying monotone BUZZER. It was a horrible enough sound even when it actually worked and registered a take but so often it would happen that you'd be deep in kip and you'd hear the buzzer going off outside, you'd jump out of your nice warm, dry sleeping bag, run outside into the mud in the dark, in your socks only to find ABSOLUTELY NOTHING HAPPENING!! I well remember a comment made by my good mate Steve Horne who once uttered the wise words "wouldn't it be good if you could cause these objects pain and hurt them" and this was spot on where Heron bite alarms were concerned. Any light breeze or damp ... even hot  or cold weather would set them a'buzzing and then on occasion you'd get out of bed in the morning, finding your rod on the floor having been dragged there by a fish and they'd not let out so much a single bleep.

The inner workings of the bite alarms from the bowels of hell ... I googled this image and the odd thing was that I found that it was uploaded by our very own Diane Wrathfull ... oop's I mean Dylan Wrathall. For those of you out of my wavelength, Dylan was an old specimen hunter from Hertfordshire who ditched the fishing the early 1990's, moved to SE Kent, got into birding and became a good, if very irritating, loud mouthed  mate. Only joking Dyl, we love you really ... well, okay, sometimes we do. Dyl's back into fishing these days and he's very, very old.

I found this on-line too, some original, still in the box Heron bite alarms. Believe it or not they were on sale and they wanted £90 for them!!?? It can't have been for the purpose of fishing with them but surely more likely for some sadistic torture method destined for a postal address in Guantanamo Bay? The grating sound of a Heron can make a man lose his mind or admit to anything true or otherwise in mere minutes. I'm not sure if I ever saw white Herons? I remember them coming in either green or black? One of the old alarms came in an army camo colour too, were they Herons? Or did old Gonzo just paint his camouflaged during a moment of tinkering and I have this image stuck in my memory? It does sound like the sort of thing that he would do?  

We were fortunate that the age of the Heron bite alarm was a short lived affair for our generation as by the early 1980's some local bod invented the rather wonderful Optonic. We bought everything they had to offer, they were heaven sent surely?? I even splashed out on one of those super duper white four way boxes. I became bedazzled by it's vast array of four different coloured flashing L.E.D. lights, and its deep space movie like tones ... it did half decent Keith Emerson impressions and, unlike the original type, it was loud too, and had extension cables meaning you could have it in your bivvy giving you something to glance at like some precious object. These too were rubbish as it turned out. The extension cables were too thin, stopped working properly after about two weeks and the box housing itself wasn't even waterproof, meaning that once the thin cables broke that I was forced to hide my 'precious object'  under a Tupperware box out near to the front rod rest. The divorce was galling ... finally the precious object broke altogether and being dead, I then had to bury it in the dustbin with the spent potato peelings and other general trash. A sad, sad day, impending love had turned to aggravation, sadness then deep sorrow and rejection. Soon Delkim came along, then Geoff (who else, he had his uses) found this Brummy dude called Les who could super dooperise an Optonic by the use of witchcraft, an outlandishly new GPO loudspeaker and a cut out switch meaning that the batteries didn't run out once a week. Genius it was, pure genius. Geoff was great at getting top quality gear, he always had his finger on the pulse. When we had the bait company up and running I remember him saying that some bloke he knew was able to make us some stainless steel rod rests. The other thing was that he'd give us them in exchange for bait. Now I cannot impress on you enough as to the astounding quality of these bank sticks, made from top quality stainless steel, totally indestructible, beautifully designed to utter perfection and what a joy to behold they were. Of all the fishing gear I ever owned those bank sticks and two/three way rod rests were by far the best quality thing of them all. I hate to think how much they would have cost if we had to buy these custom machined things now? Geoff was the best ever wheeler dealer that I ever met of course.

The initial object of buzzery hatred ... The Heron buzzer ... plus the obligatory red Fairy Liquid bottle top bobbin ... another newer image I found on Google.

We then moved on to these, the old original Optonics in the very early 1980's perhaps even late in 1979? The initial design had no speaker built into the heads, so that white box is the extension speaker. They came in a set just like this and just looked space age to us at the time after years of using those old antique looking antennae style Herons. In 1981 you could also get a souped upped four way extension speaker box which looked the biz with its four different coloured ultra bright LED's, it sounded good too with its four different tones (one which sounded a bit Mini Moog if you know what that is?) but inevitably those thin extension cables invariably let the side down and we were forced to moved on.

Our next move was to get the heads revamped so as to cut out the need for any extension box. I had all of my Optonics converted by a firm called Delkim, but even then they had a teething problem as the four volt battery allied to the Optonic always being switched on when in use, ran the batteries down quite quickly and they'd often go when you weren't expecting it, leading to silent takes. In time we got to hear about this bloke from the Midlands (Les Bamford) who had the brainwave of fitting the heads with a cut off switch that only used any battery when in inner wheel was moving. We then got all of our Optonic heads re-revamped by Les and arrived at the perfect Optonic. Mine were identical to the above photo taken off Google ... the 'ears' and the aluminium upgrade to the tightening post eerily similar to my old things.

Our final alarms were these, though I very rarely used mine as I preferred the Bamfords. I found the above image whilst searching around Google for the Bamfords, to be honest it had slipped my mind that I even had these things at all. The above are called Neville's but we used to refer to them as TelKims as we used to swap our 'Neville's' for bait and the actual transaction was always done face to face by our mate from London called Terry Pethybridge (or Tel to us) we had no contact with Neville at all. The joke name was arrived at as there were other far more famous bite alarms called Delkims at the time, and as Del rhymed with Tel (or Terry our mate) some bright spark thought up this silly name. It's a fantastic gag I think, it still makes me laugh to this day. These alarms looked like they been knocked up in someone's garden shed but they were ultra reliable, used hardly any batteries and never let in water ... they were great for bolt rig style Carping use anyway, they weren't quite as sensitive as the Optonics, well not once we swapped out and revamped the vanes on the inner wheel anyhow. As I say, we swapped them for Fishmeal boilie mix and bottles of Fish-oil, so in effect they cost us nothing. I also think Geoff did a similar deal with Les Bamford too come to think of it. I know he used to get his bait off of us at the time. You get all sorts of perks once you have your own bait company and all the more so when one of your business partners is a wheeler dealer like my old mate Geoff.

Hooks and Tinkering:

Tackle was limited back then but more than adequate. Hook technology made various leaps and bounds (thanks to chemically sharpening) during the 1980's and for most of the open water style fishing a Komatsu size 8 and 6 proved impressively strong for a smallish hook made from such a fine gauge wire. The shanks were quite short, but given by then we were mostly using braided hook links at that time then it was quite easy to falsely extend the shank by using superglue as a stiffener which helped with using the hooks for bolt rigs. The points were needle sharp meaning they could be used straight out of the bag, unlike many of the earlier hooks previously available which needed to be re-crowned with the use of a sharpening stone. If it sounds a bit 'cave man' then believe me it pretty much was. Virtually every bit of tackle you bought needed a bit of handy work done on it before being totally usable prior to the mid 1980's.

Also, it's probably worth mentioning here just how much of our gear we either made from scratch or were forced to tinker with in some way in those formative years? Like Dave Stewart mentioned earlier on, I was constantly tinkering, I quite liked it to be honest. I had that sort of mind. Tinkering with stuff was all part of the specimen hunter/Carp/Pike anglers game back then.

That's quite a lot of pointless waffle about lots of old outdated fishing tackle innit? I never said this blog would be interesting now did I?

Wait ... I just had another thought, there's even more boredom on the horizon ...

Then we come to ... the 1980's Weather Forecasts.

Ah, the post digital age mob wont be able to even fathom things such as getting weather forecasts via Teletext or Ceefax will they? I realise that old weather forecasts aren't actually gear but it made me laugh looking back, so I included it here in this bit. Back in the 80's Ceefax and Teletext were the only 24 hour available mediums we were forced to use before the advent of the interweb and the home P.C. It was accessed on either the BBC or ITV (we only had four TV channels at the time) via the red button on your TV remote which had a few other varied coloured buttons allowing clicking though a few different menu's. The graphics were square (about 2 pixels per square foot?) and the written content archaic, but it did allow you to find out about essential info such as the up to date Football news, the daily TV guide and most relevant to this awfully dull and boring, overly nostalgic Blog, an up to date weather forecast meaning that you just couldn't do without it. It cost nowt anyway, all the TV's at the time had both Teletext and Ceefax built into it. Ceefax was the BBC's version wasn't it? ITV's the Teletext?  Or vice versa? Take yer pick. Cricky, the more of this stuff I write the older I'm starting to feel. I just described Ceefax as 'archaic' but back then this isn't how we even thought of it, it was cutting edge at the time believe it or not. Being anglers we needed to know what the weather would be doing and this was the only way of finding out in the 1980's. 

I found these old snapshots of Ceefax weather forecast maps on Google. This is how we went about it in those far off pre-interweb days kids ... look at those rather stunning graphics. For quality they resemble the old potato printing we did at school when we were about seven?

Ceefax and Teletext had other uses, a TV guide and a comprehensive sports page update wotsit with many dedicated pages for Football, Rugby, Cricket, Athletics etc. You could tell if a household had any Football addicts just by looking at the coloured buttons on his TV handset as they were often the most worn out buttons due to the constant looking around for news about the beautiful game. One of my favourite ever Ceefax pages was the one at the bottom ... 4 - 1 at Old Trafford, the afternoon Fernando Torres made Nemanda Vidic look like an pub footballer with a glass eye and two wooden legs. Oh, what memories eh ... Pepe Reina, Lucas and Ryan Babel are still playing ... so is the human ego with legs (Ronaldo) as is another potato faced human from the horrid lot from Old Trafford.