My formative carp-fishing years were spent on an Essex pit which ran the length of an enormous industrial waste tip, and this was the source of some innovative bite-indication materials. The most memorable was the cistern alarm. This was an upturned toilet cistern placed in the margin with the down-pipe hole facing up. Rod rests were placed fore and aft so that the line between the rod’s butt and second rings could be pulled down and tensioned by a large stone finely balanced on the lip of the down-pipe hole. When the line tightened the stone tipped and plunged resoundingly into the water within the cistern – ker-bloosh!
Jam jars were always good for sheltering bottle-top bobbins from the wind but they couldn’t actually prevent them rising up and out, so a plug of high density foam was stuffed into the butt eye to limit drag. But this was tricky: too loose and the desired effect was lost; too tight and any self-respecting fish would feel the resistance and drop the bait. Later, the John Roberts run-clip would do a better job of keeping the line taut while permitting the bobbin to hang or lay undisturbed.
I wonder if the latest generation of hi-tec carpers are aware of the trials and errors of their forefathers not so very long ago. For a couple of decades or more, they experimented with all manner of contraptions and gizmos in an attempt to create a sensitive system impervious to drag, wind and false alarms. There was the magnetic Squezy bottle top we somewhat mysteriously ‘anchored’ a few inches above a like-minded magnet in the grass; the clip-on swinger whose heart was in the right place but was never much good; the pile of pennies and OXO tin alarm…
Superb washing-up liquid – but no good for bobbin enthusiasts…
A couple of years ago I wrote (perhaps naively) to the ‘Customer Relations Department’ at Procter & Gambles, makers of the famous Fairy Liquid. I wanted to know if they might have a box of old style bottle-tops gathering dust at the back of a warehouse somewhere in West Thurrock; the new style closures which snap shut flush to the main body were, I explained, useless for anglers like me. I even drew them a couple of annotated diagrams which clearly illustrated the benefits of the old looped bottle top and the failings of its successor but, naturally for these impersonal times, I received no reply. Sadly, I have but a very small handful left in the zip-up, secure, inner-pocket of my fishing jacket: they are gold dust.
What else? I dunno…over to you? What novel indicator systems did you invent?
