The Alternative Angler

Never mind smelling the flowers, don’t forget to take time out to see the satirical side of fishing life and grab a laugh along the way as well. So here’s a regular column from Kevin Perkins to remind us that life is for laughing at, or taking the p*** out of, whenever we can.

Come with me to the mystifying world that is ‘Poleland’ where nothing is ever as simple or cheap as you would think it should be. Try to unravel the conundrum of how come the apparently least complicated method of fishing is also the most expensive. But real world values don’t seem to apply when you enter Poleland.

Considering this form of fishing is directly descended from the bamboo cane, string and bent pin method, it seems to have moved stratospherically up market, when it comes to pricing. Below are just a few examples for you to judge.

Calculators at the ready……

I’ll try to get this right, as I know the mathematicians amongst you will scrupulously check the figures. A weekly angling publication recently published a glowing report on a 16 metre pole, with the wallet puckering price tag of £ 3499. At 16 metres, that is 627.2 inches, which I reckon works out at £ 5.58 per inch!

So what, I hear some cry, you get what you pay for etc, etc. But my point is that in order to elasticate the thing, ie, before it could even be used, the reviewer had to lop 12 inches off the top. I make that £ 66.95 worth of carbon you have just left lying on the shed floor! I would swallow hard before paying that for a complete rod, which would be twelve times as long and have rings, reel fittings and a handle.

Blame the French

When did this all come about? I think we should blame the French (why not!). My vague memory is that many years ago the organisers of the World Championships banned running lines because they were ‘unsporting’ and the Frogs didn’t know how to use them properly, so ‘Mais Non!’ (Aren’t fixed leads still banned?). How can you have a World Championships where you are only permitted to use the one method that our European cousins specialise at? It all seems a bit like the Yanks organising their ‘World Series’ baseball to me, where American teams only need apply.

When it comes to all other kit in ‘Poleland’ seat boxes have to posses a shiny, ‘engine turned’ effect on the sides, or they aren’t worth looking at. Let alone sitting on. Then there are the add-on accessories. So many, that by the time they are all fitted to the front, back, and sides of your ‘fishing station’ you are probably occupying close to a third of an acre! In fact, all they are missing is two wheels and a towing hitch and you could just hook them up behind your car and tow them to the water’s edge.

Ready made and colour coded

And have you ever seen the insides of one of the Polelanders seat boxes? Row after row of ready-made rigs, all neatly stored, and colour coded. All made up at home and tank tested, all marked on the side with a series of coded dots. And the insides of their boxes even look like that after they have been fishing!

Proper anglers know that at the end of a session, your open the lid of your box and just shovel everything in. Floats get shoved in pockets, not boxes. Reels may have come packed in cases, but they don’t go back that way – do they! Weights are subjected to the gravity-sorting device, which means you throw them in the top and by the time you get home you know they will have worked their way to the bottom of the box. Sorting this mess out gives you something to do before your next trip. Unless, like me, there has been the odd occasion when you have gone fishing in a hurry, only to discover that on opening the lid of the box, you obviously didn’t sort it out last time. Not a pretty sight!

Smarten up with a gleem-o-Matic

When Polelanders get to the waterside they have to have a wooden platform on which to place their ‘fishing station’ (stops them getting wet or, heaven forbid, muddy, although I don’t doubt there is a ‘Gleem-o-Matic’ cleaner to restore the as-new look with just a wipe). The obvious next development should be extensions to these wooden platforms. They will be based on the Pontoon bridge principle whereby you just continue to add additional floating sections until you are twenty, thirty, even forty feet out from the bank. In fact, these anglers might end up so far out from the edge that when they get to the end of their platforms, that they end up turning round and fishing towards the bank they set out from!

I say let’s help them all out, with specifically designed fisheries which consist of a 30 foot wide channel which has access to both banks. Then the longest these poles need to be is 12 foot. Think how cheap they will be, and at so short a length, they don’t even have to be made of carbon. There will be a nice wooden bench running along both sides for them to sit on, so no need for the seat box, and they will only need one rig. In fact, not so far removed from the bamboo cane, string and bent pin after all…..