Best colour for a fishing rod

[John Aston]

Wild brown trout and chub are ultra spooky , but also very curious. Grayling are so laid back I've caught them under the rod top on fly , and ditto with pike on lure . But on a hard fished chalkstream grayling can be very twitchy indeed. Barbel seem to be oblivious of anglers sometimes- more than once I've almost trod on one .

 

[@Clive]

Shooting crows and magpies is one of the hardest things to do in the pest control on a shoot. Yet set up a Larsen or ladder trap and you can catch dozens as long as you start with a bird that was caught outside the area where the trap is and keep changing it every few days. Corvids are swapped between keepers and shoot owners to ensure that it is a stranger in the trap as the call bird. .

 

[nottskev]

Shooting crows and magpies is one of the hardest things to do in the pest control on a shoot. Yet set up a Larsen or ladder trap and you can catch dozens as long as you start with a bird that was caught outside the area where the trap is and keep changing it every few days. Corvids are swapped between keepers and shoot owners to ensure that it is a stranger in the trap as the call bird. .

Google corvid intelligence and you will have an entertaining evening with eye-opening youtube videos. I haven't tried googling barbel intelligence. (No offence to these super fish; I love fishing for them.)

 

[Keith M]

What spooks fish is a mystery to me. I've seen big chub high tail it when I introduced some sweetcorn from a good distance upstream.Carp fled from bread the first time I tried it in France yet took cheese pellets confidently. When wading I've had fish swimming around me and grayling taking a dangling fly while I was unhooking another. The biggest tench I have caught came after I had wound in after two fishless hours and left the bait in a foot of water at the rod end while having a cuppa, and had 6lb of silvers from 18" of water at the rod end during a match. **** Clegg in the next peg was not impressed. .

I used to wade up to my thighs in a small feeder stream that eventually ran into the Grand Union Canal; and I used to catch some largish Chub trotting with my centrepin and using breadflake on my hook; and the Chub used to come right up close to me; with some virtually brushing against my waders; however when I fished from the bank the Chub were very easily spooked even if I were keeping still and quiet.

Keith

 

[@Clive]

Google corvid intelligence and you will have an entertaining evening with eye-opening youtube videos. I haven't tried googling barbel intelligence. (No offence to these super fish; I love fishing for them.)

They can't count though. One tactic was for three of us to walk through the fields and when we passed through a copse one would hide while the other two carried on walking. Once they were out of sight the hidden bloke would call the crow and hopefully shoot it.

They also have a pathalogical hatred of weasels, ferrets and foxes. You can't use a caged or thethered animal as a lure, but the tail of some random animal from a fur hat bought from the charity shop had them every time. Especially when it was twitched along the grass using fishing line.

 

[John Aston]

Sorry, but I find Larsen traps an utter abomination. To imprison a member of the cleverest of all birds is something I find repellent. And all so we can shoot a few more thick pheasants which probably arrived on a truck .

I used to shoot a fair bit and still have the odd farm shoot day but increasingly I see the sport as being just massively out of step with the times.

 

[Blue Fisher]

I have a great deal of difficulty with this, not the colour of a fishing rod which started this thread, but anything that results in death of an animal. I don’t want to harm an animal, but I eat meat, I want the countryside to be maintained how it traditionally was which inevitably requires death. Even the production of vegetables requires death on my behalf either directly or by loss of habitat. All I can do is feel I have the balance right. I’m never to quick to judge and I also know I don’t always have the right to judge.
I also respect that my point of balance will be totally different from another’s.
My balance means I hate a deep hooked fish ( whatever colour rod it is hooked on) and I blame myself for not paying attention. So I always make sure I’m holding the rod, I always make sure the rig is sensitive enough to detect bites early. If I want to watch the wildlife I stop fishing, if I want to drink I stop fishing. These breaks help me focus when I am fishing.

now back to rod colour, anyone for sky blue pink with yellow spots?

 

[Alan Whitty]

I can relate to your post blue Fisher, however we must also consider that not everyone believes in what you believe, I don't believe in santa claus or any god or deity, so dont take kindly to Jehovah's or muslims trying to sell me copies of the Koran, but I deeply respect everyone else's right to believe in the faith of their choice, in this country we believe its terrible for the Chinese to eat dogs, why, if they choose that meat, I hate the thought of animals suffering, yet my doctor would let me die in agony if I had a terminal illness, I've killed pigeons that have been winged by shooters, made me feel physically sick, but I'd do it again in a heartbeat....
Back to rods, if it didn't cost so much to have a rod built I'd have one made just to wind anglers up...

 

[Alan Whitty]

Barbel are extremely cautious to movement and shadow on the bank, unless you have legions of hungry mouths, you could say that about any species, including carp, chub...

 

[@Clive]

Sorry, but I find Larsen traps an utter abomination. To imprison a member of the cleverest of all birds is something I find repellent. And all so we can shoot a few more thick pheasants which probably arrived on a truck .

I used to shoot a fair bit and still have the odd farm shoot day but increasingly I see the sport as being just massively out of step with the times.

The shoot was self supporting in that we trapped and bred our own birds.

It was adjacent to a country park and when the farmers who owned the land put in for a country stewardship subsidy the land had to be assessed by DEFRA. Their report was that the land was in better order than the country park because of the trapping of corvids, squirrels and rats. I first used one on the request of a retired farmer who's wife was concerned about the lack of song birds in their country garden. I made and installed a small Larsen trap and within two years they had all sorts of birds nesting in the garden.

Funnily enough I was fishing the Dearne one day and saw some suspicious activity on the far bank, a RSPB reserve. When I got my monocular out I could see two RSPB officers necking magpies they had caught in a ladder trap that was secreted out of the bird watchers view.

My view is that if corvids are culled prior to the nesting season the countryside will have many more song birds.

 

[John Aston]

Perhaps - but didn't we used to say that about pike ? Kill them all and the roach fishing will be better? Predator numbers depend entirely upon prey availability and I'm always sceptical of mankind saying there are 'too many' of this species or that to justify killing them . And who am I to argue that a magpie of carrion crow , both the cleverest of birds , deserves to die in order that a blackbird can live ?

 

[@Clive]

I have never heard that John. Not outside keepered trout rivers anyway when they were referring to trout, not roach. My view is that the countryside is being managed and altered by housing, roads, drainage, farming, etc and therefore is not representative of a natural environment. If we change the balance then we should try and restore it. There are many species of birds that are having a hard time adjusting to today's environment, some are classed as endangered. Corvids adapt better than most other species. The biggest threat to songbird populations are cats, hawks, corvids, grey squirrels and rats. We reduced the numbers of the last three during the period December to March and that had a positive impact on the other bird species. The farmers also left strips of fallow ground alongside hedgerows and other patches of ground where bird friendly plants thrived.

 

[John Aston]

It was almost a mantra when I grew up ,and even in the 90s a local coarse club had a prize for the most dead pike produced at the bailiff's house. As for corvids etc, I see obscene numbers of pheasants being released locally and the keepers wittering on about foxes and crows , apparently oblivious of the fact that their abundance is entirely down to the insane and unsustainable number of birds that are put down . Not so good for snakes , lizards , newt and invertebrates which the hordes of pheasants eat .....

Sustainable wild shoots ? Fine , I thoroughly approve . Commercial shoots with hundreds of birds shot (and sometimes discarded), kilos of lead sprayed around the countryside ? I'd ban 'em tomorrow .

 

[@Clive]

Some of the commercial pheasant shoots are a disgrace.

Ours was known more for English partridge and a few pheasants. Alan Scotthorne's parents bred most of the birds in the early years and those were supplemented by wild reared stock that made use of the corridors between pens on the deer farm. There was a gap of about 4 feet between the pens forming a grid of corridors over many acres that foxes could not get into. We also had a trout stream running through with wild brownies and bullheads in it. A six foot whip with a PTN or GRHE was all that was needed.

I started poaching on the land when I was 14 with ferrets and a puny air rifle and ended up 40 years later as honorary pest controller.

 

[Blue Fisher]

Do commercial shoots have some similarities with commercial fisheries?

Some get their pleasure from bagging up.
Some get their pleasure from the social experience,
some the competition between participants.
Some by getting into the wild.
Some by competing with their own personal bests.
whatever it is as long as we put the care of our environment and the fish first it does not matter.
in all branches of the sport there is a risk that we won’t do the right thing in order to achieve our goals, we just need to reflect on what we feel is right.

 

[John Aston]

Some commercials are an open goal for critics - not the usual fisherman's bogeyman , the 'anti' , but the many decent folk who care about the natural environment. Crowding absurd numbers of fish into small , shallow pools and then winning prizes for catching a hundredweight more than the rest is hardly different to the live pigeon shoots they used to have in Monte Carlo . The fish might go back , but for what ? A diet of fishery pellets and the prospect of endless recapture until they die ? I can't defend that

 

[chevin4]

Getting back to the title of this thread in 1964 I thought the best colour for fishing rod was red. It was coming up to Christmas my mum used to take me swimming on a Thursday. After the lesson we visited the Co Op store in Luton. In those days it was quite a high-end store and they had a decent fishing section. Having taken up fishing in the summer of that year I decided I wanted a rod for Christmas. The rod I chose was a 3 piece 11ft rod the butt and middle sections were red tubular steel the tip section was white fibreglass. From memory the rod was made by Merit a company one normally associates with games and toys. The following summer I put a permanent set in the butt section trying to cast a heavy lead into the sea at Sheringham whilst on holiday