Pikers are obsessed with good bite indication for obvious reasons. Get it wrong and you can easily end up staring at trace wire disappearing down a fish’s throat.I arrived at my current combination of front alarm/drop-off indicator after years of trying bobbins, monkey climbers, various coils of silver paper and plastic tubes. While it’s probably the best compromise, shop-bought drop-offs have two potentially serious flaws. They aren’t always heavy enough to show a drop-back, where a fish picks up the bait and comes towards you. And their plastic clips can trap the line, making them even more dangerous.
Solar Tackle make an excellent adjustable line clip. It’s main advantage – apart from lack of screws that fall off and get lost as you fumble with the tension – is that it’s made of metal and its jaws end in two steel balls which don’t grip even the braids that so many of us now use. The trouble is, they’re tricky to fit to existing shop-boughts, the heads of which soon disintegrate. The answer is easy. The clips end in a standard thread, which screws into all the other bits and bobs beloved by the carp set. Solar also make fluorescent heads and even a range of screw-in weights. Now we’re getting somewhere. Combine clip, head and weight and you have the answer to a piker’s prayer. Well, almost. They don’t currently make the arm you need to sit the head on, or a clip to attach it to your rear rod rest. But this is easily sorted with the help of a skewer – push a rig sleeve on it first, so it screws into the weight – a tool clip and a bit of silicone. The end result won’t win any prizes in the looks stakes, but they work a treat. You can adjust the clip for fishing moving water, you can even add more weight to keep things tight. Best of all, the bill for all the bits comes in at less then a tenner per indicator. Less than several potentially dodgy shop-bought alternatives. | ||
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