I nearly died, age 14, swimming out for a 4 swan Ultra waggler hanging from a dead tree in the middle of the pond - perhaps 15 yards out. I'm a poor swimmer and the cold - even in mid-summer - almost got me on the way back. Somehow scrambled my way back to the bank and gave myself a talking-to that's never been forgotten.
The rescued and repaired float - I almost bust it in the mad struggle to the bank - was, at the time, my only modern float, aside from a Drennan onion fished out a few days later with three branches tied together with discarded bits of Charlie Tanner - no more swimming for me!
The local shops still carried cards of Harcork-style offerings and the nearest up-to-date tackle shop was a 20 mile cycle journey, which I eventually undertook on a regular basis just for the odd couple of Drennan floats - driftbeaters, canal darts, polywags, stabilisers and onions. I'm not sure that the cycle trip was any safer than the swim, but you don't usually drown on a main road.
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Talking of good mass-produced floats... These Drennan Tench Perfection things are useless. They don't catch tench and they're hopeless as sliders. I've got rid of most of mine, but you might have some left, cluttering up your float boxes. If you have, I'll be happy to pop round and dispose of them for you. It's a good job Drennan stopped churning out this type of nonsense and gave us even more pole floats for commercials.
I have an article somewhere with a pic of Peter on a tench session, showing the floats off before they were commercially available. I tried making a couple, but the thin cane used wasn't really suitable. IIRC, the Tench Perfection has a buoyant peacock stem? The floats in the article looked a fair bit longer than the ones on sale.
