Home made tackle items

Well I don't know about you but I just love making items of tackle and I get a great deal of satisfaction catching fish on something I made myself. I started out making simple peacock wagglers and still have some in my tackle box that I made over 20 years ago. I also still have some open ended swim feeders that I made 15 years ago made out of sections cut out of Lemonade bottles and I even caught some fish on one of them recently.
This week I have made some pole feeders and elastic connectors, the connector is so that the fish do not feel resistance from the the heavy elastic in the pole when they take the bait.

An Example of the style of pole feeder and connectors I have made this week

I have progressed my float making from the simple straight and insert wagglers I started out making and now make my own loaded sliders, Sticks, Avon's and various pole floats and I have spent a lot of time and effort on finding suitable finishes for my floats as I have been very disappointed with the durability of some mass produced floats. I have had some real bad experiences with some of the Drennan range with the paint cracking within an hour of use and needing large amounts of shot removing within a couple of hours to stop them sinking.

The strange thing is that it is only certain patterns of float that suffer this problem, for instance I have most of their Stick float range and have had no problems but the wire stemmed Avon's paint cracks as described above. When I get a problem with a floats I normally dissect them and after carefully removing the paint  examine the Balsa bodies and in most cases the bodies have visible splits in them. This has inspired me to make my own versions of these floats and so far so good with the durability of the paint finish. But I do still use many Drennan floats and other Tackle items its just a shame a few items are letting them down.



Some of my hand made floats left to right Wire stem Avon, Carbon Stem 0.5g Pole float and a Cane and Balsa Stick

 The floats above are just a small selection of the patterns I make and although it is very time consuming it is something quite special when one of them slips away and you strike into a fish. I hope to do some more detailed articles on the specific steps involved and the materials you need to make and finish you own floats and tackle in the near future, so keep an eye out and if there is something I can help you with please let me know as I am more than happy to share information with you.