DES TAYLOR
Modern kit makes life far easier. Why hanker after the bad old days?
“Old tackle is rubbish...”
IT’S so easy to look through rose-tinted glasses when we talk about the tackle we used years ago.
I have fond memories of some of the rods and reels that served me well in the past, although most of them are now retired and hanging up in my tackle den. But there’s no denying that tackle over the past 20 years has moved on so much that many people my age have a job keeping up with the improvements. As an angler you can move with the times or remain in your own little cocoon and carry on fishing with the same stuff you did 30 years ago.
In my case I like to mix the old and the new, using a lot of the rigs and baits of yesteryear, but on modern tackle which rarely lets me down.
For me, floatfishing is so much easier with modern carbon rods than it was with my old Hardy Matchmaker. That rod is so heavy I don’t think I could fish with it for more than three hours at a time, yet in its day it cost me a week’s wages and was reckoned to be the bee’s knees.
Today I could put a dozen float rods in your hand that cost just £50 and are much better.
Some anglers will tell you the old reels are still the best, but trying to compare a Mitchell 300 with a top modern-day reel is like pitting an Austin A40 against a Nissan GTR. The lightness, smoothness, clutch and line lay on today’s reels can’t be faulted.
The lines we use have come on leaps and bounds too. Nowadays I can leave line on some of my reels for a couple of years before I change it, and it’s still good to go. What’s more the abrasion-resistance, low diameter and lack of memory is quite superb on modern mono.
When fluorocarbon came on to the market it racked lines up yet another notch. It’s virtually invisible to fish and gets me more bites, so whatever I am fishing for it’s my first choice of hooklength material.
When I look back at the thick, springy lines I used all those years ago I wonder how I got a bite at all – indeed, truth be told I didn’t get that many!
Old floats are fascinating mini works of art, but they can’t compare with modern patterns and materials. Again, they make life a lot easier.
Right at the front end of the action are hooks. In the past, these would let us down far too often. They’d straighten out, pull out of fish and even break under strain.
Who among us hasn’t heard an older angler say: “It must have been a big ’un because it straightened my hook!” Sadly, in most cases it was a bad hook that lost you the fish, which may not even have been all that big in the first place!
Today there’s a hook for every species, bait and rig, and very rarely do I lose a fish because of a defect in this essential little bit of kit.
Fishing tackle has a great history, but the old stuff is just that – history. I have chosen to embrace the world of modern tackle, and I look forward to many more great days in the countryside using it to make angling dreams come true.