| KEVIN PERKINS | |
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. |
TACKLE TIRADE Having read Woody’s excellent article on his local tackle shop closing down, I began to wonder what it’s all about. Do we expect too much, are we given too much choice, and perhaps worst of all; do we actually know what we really want from tackle shops? When I was a boy I lived in an area of Bucks that is almost totally devoid of fishing, the canal at Berkhampstead was six miles distant, the Thames at Cookham thirteen miles away and Tring reservoirs an even further bike ride at fourteen miles. In such a fishing desert, our local town, Chesham, boasted not one, but two, tackle shops! Now, neither of these was solely dedicated to selling fishing tackle. One was a leather goods specialist (equine equipment, not fetish!) and the other was a motor bike retailer. The bike shop even carried a selection of sea fishing tackle, and we couldn’t have been any further from the coast if we tried. Perhaps they were pre-empting the effects of global warming a tad too soon, in expecting the azure blue waters of the English Channel to be lapping the foothills of Chiltern Hills, but full marks for enterprise! Contrast this to where I live now and I am surrounded by fishable water to an embarrassing extent, indeed I can easily walk to a lake containing carp to 30lb and the rest of the fish population is considered of a standard high enough to fish national matches. Within five miles there are well over twenty different venues to visit. And within the same catchment there are probably half a dozen tackle shops. But this is not a static figure. As fast as one opens, another one closes, and of course, they all do things slightly differently. Now, from the shop’s point of view, of course, they have to make a living. How much added value they give in ‘customer service’ becomes a matter for debate. Do anglers have a right to go into a tackle shop and expect the man behind the counter to be an expert? Should the shop owner/manager know the merits of every piece of tackle they retail, or perhaps better still, will they only sell equipment that they believe to be the best available? Are we anglers expecting our local store to be a ‘one stop shop’ where we can purchase everything we could possibly want? Imagine the stock variations and stock levels this would entail, let alone the size of the premises and the numbers of staff to run such a place. Forecasting buying trends becomes a nightmare, with ‘demographics’ kicking in, and the oft-heard phrase, ‘if it don’t sell, we don’t stock it’ coming into play. Then they drop the slower selling lines, and concentrate on those with the best mark-up. Customers numbers start to drop off, so staff numbers are cut, turnover suffers, rent and rates increase year on year, business becomes unprofitable, etc, etc. Probably over simplifying things to a degree, but the basics are about right. Perhaps we should question what the tackle manufacturers are doing, where these days new developments seem to be driven by fashion rather than form. Every year we have new models of reels launched in a blaze of publicity, trumpeting how much better they are and the staggering increase in performance, smoothness, increased capacity, retrieve speed, blah, blah. If that is the case, why was last year’s so bad? If it was so much worse don’t we deserve a refund? How about a bit of joined up thinking and try putting two or even three year’s development budget into producing something that will last a bit longer, and try and foster some brand loyalty? And do we need so many different ranges of rods on the market, or are we just being flooded because the manufacturers have to keep the factories churning them out in ever greater quantities? I know I have said it before, but how many times have you actually worn a rod out? Broken by being slammed in a car door, trod on the tip, used a 3Lb TC rod to try a launch a 12oz mackerel (no, just me, then!) but rarely worn out, I suspect. Now we are seeing adverts for rods that will cast 160yards – realistically, how many of us are ever going to reach distances like that? If this is the case just how many of us will feel compelled to abandon our current weapons in favour of adorning our rod pods with ego-massaging ‘160’s’ until, of course, some manufacturer ups the ante and brings out ‘180’s ‘. You will no doubt hear the dart players favourite saying (one hundreeeeed annnnnnddd eeeeeighteeeeeeeeee!) drifting across the water as one of these behemoths is unleashed. Back to the shops, surely it is a question of adaptation, is the real way forward to be found in something like shop within shop concessions? Perhaps we should be prepared to visit more than one outlet in order to obtain everything we want. If tackle shops can’t make money selling maggots, your local pet food superstore (mine already sells pellets, groundbait, crushed hemp and of course all manner of dog and cat food) might be persuaded. When it comes to tackle, many motoring stores in our area now sell camping and outdoor equipment, is it such a leap forward for them to sell fishing tackle? A national chain such as Halfords would have huge buying power, and probably already deals with a bicycle distributor that also just happens to supply the angling trade with fishing tackle. Our tackle buying patterns have changed; we are more than happy to trawl the internet and mail order companies for bargains, including non-tackle shops like Argos. Discount tackle roadshows tour the country and cheap tackle stalls appear at car boot sales. If we are happy to spend money at these outlets we should expect the sort of service levels and product knowledge that you would get from say, your local DIY superstore, ie, bugger all! How have we got the right to expect to have a local tackle shop to visit if we don’t support it with our patronage? |
