I have some beautiful floats of various designs, and they all sit in a jar as decoration. The ones in use are far more rudimentary. Shotting down a fine tip is all very well on a glassy pond, not so good five rod lengths out with a chop on the water. Match anglers building up a weight efficiently, and pleasure anglers targeting a species at an inconvenient distance using the sub-optimal method of float fishing, have different priorities ; )
Keep telling it how it is Mark. I got bought a set of handmade reed wagglers for my 50th, I made the excuse that they were too nice to fish with, mounted them in a frame and they live on the wall of the shed. As my glimmers aren't as sharp now I've become a convert to the Drennan visi wag floats for stillwaters. The visi wag 2 range I've found to be very sensitive, 2mm tips, ideal for tench and crucians in the margins. I'd love to get my hands on the reflective paint they use.
For highly visible tips I buy hollow pole float tips from 2mm upwards. From 3mm upwards you can make them super-sensitive by cutting a scoop out an inch from the tip and cutting the very tip off so that water can flow through the tip.
There was a period in the mid 70s before I first got hold of peacock quill that I made and used sarkandas reed floats but once I had peacock quill the reed floats were relegated to spares.
Dear Mark, I love your videos, but at 1:48 you broke my heart. As a kid starting out fishing in the early 90's, I inherited a jumble of tackle odds and ends from various family friends, often in rusty old tobacco tins, to go with my stubby "all purpose" fibreglass spinning rod. Amongst the jumble was a hand-made, bottle green "fluted avon" with a thick, bright orange tip. I didn't know anything about different types of float or styles of fishing, and I didn't have anyone to teach me. I just chose a float I liked the look of, fixed it top and bottom a few feet above a hooked worm (plumbing the depth? Never heard of it!) and cast out into the local pond, full of enthusiasm and hope. For no particular reason (and certainly not because it was especially successful) that green fluted avon became my favourite. If I was lucky, a hungry perch would pass my way. Watching the chunky tip of that float bob and slide under, blissfully ignorant of the shortcomings of my technique and tackle, was utterly magical. 30 odd years later, I know a little more about fishing, but not a lot. I don't use that float anymore, but I still have it (repainted and with a new eye whipped on) and it still has a place in my heart. Thanks to you, I now know what it's called, what it was supposed to be used for, and why not to use it! But I won't be consigning it to my room 101. It might not have been a "good" float in any conventional sense - but it was the favourite chunky, bottle green float of a little kid discovering a life-long love of fish and of trying to catch them. That's something worth hanging onto. Tight lines my friend.
floats and flies to catch fish . floats and flies to catch fishermen. i do still like to see the latter in a nice presentation case on a wall. thanks for another great video.
As a kid in Africa we used porcupine quills with bicycle valve rubber sleeves each end, size 8 or 10 hook with one worm about 3ft from the quill. No weights, the quill lay flat on the water & took off like a speedboat when Tilapia took the bait. We caught hundreds in day. Such good fun.
Realy intresting mark. Dick walkers knowledge and how it's influenced angling today is not in question. But I do wonder then as now. when we have tackle perfectly adequate for the job, is it all about being different just to fill column inches in the papers back then and / or posts on social media today. Are we trying to reinvent the wheel ?
There has always been what we now call click-bait in the angling press, and Angling Times used Dick Walker and others to stir up arguments to sell papers. The famous Walker-Sails match was set up by a letter written by Walker, and ditto some of the Walker/Marks controversies. Walker did have blind-spots and occasionally fell into the trap of not investigating and trying things out properly before castigating them. He didn't like the concept of the waggler locked on the line with big shot (mid 1970s) yet Peter Stone at the same time learnt the ropes from the Oxford match anglers and realised its effectiveness on the upper Thames in various guises.
Two words were going through my mind when I started watching this video - perch bobbers; and you never mentioned them! 🤔 They do work when fishing a worm or minnow, but there are better options. I'm sure though that most pleasure anglers have one or two in their box. Ivan used some wagglers he called 'Zoomers', but there was one made commercially by that name with a balsa domed head. They were quite good since just a wide dome about 3/16th inch above the water. They were 'now you see 'em, now you don't." I have some pole floats similar but smaller and they are great still.
I've never owned or used a perch bobber though have used balsa/chubbers for similar purpose. Ivan's zoomers predate wagglers and are really a heavily loaded 3mm cane antenna with a total capacity of 4 to 5SSG. Howard Humphrey showed me his collection of zoomers when I researched my book and I was staggered by the variety (far more than ever described by Ivan in his books and articles) but it was the development of bodied peacock wagglers that had all but superceded zoomers by about 1972. In truth very few anglers ever used the true zoomers: I've seen where on the Welland and had described how they were used, and very few match anglers ever had the skill to use them back in the day (mainly a select bunch with surnames Marks, Marlow, Humphrey, Rossi, Envis, Downes, Coles, Grouse and possibly a few more), bearing in mind catapult bans pre 1972 and the need to cast them nearly 40 yards under arm then groundbait by hand.
I remember having a green fluted avon when I was a kid. It was always my go to float from a selection of probably only about 4 or 5 floats. Loved it, caught loads on it and was gutted when I eventually lost it. Always thought it fished well but tbh I was pretty clueless back then and didn’t know otherwise 😁
The float you're thinking of is the 'Topper' named after Topper (Mervyn) Haskins and designed to be used on the lower Bristol Avon where the prevailing wind was usually upstream. The top inches of the river are slowed by the wind (why a fluted float wouldn't work) so the large bulk picks up the main flow and pull the streamlined float throgh at the correct speed.
Great video Mark, I really enjoy them and find them really interesting, One things always baffled me, In one of Billy lanes books he makes reference to the stick float, And one of the things he says, Why anybody would want to use a stick float rather than an Avon, i've always wondered are we missing something, We tend to drop things when new things come available, Many Thanks Richie. Just had a thought I had a float of my grandfathers that Pivoted in the middle.
Billy Lane's comments on stick floats need careful research and context. Back in the late 60s and early 70s stick floats became a fad float for a while and Billy was railing against them being used in circumstances to which they were not best suited: downstream winds, stillwaters, or in cases where he thought a float taking more weight would 'boss' the swim which is where Billy advocated Avon floats. Billy was a great fan of floats taking plenty of weight. Billy did use stick floats and the float company that he was associated with, Ultra Floats, certainly sold them with both Billy Lane and Ultra brand names. The pivoted floats were another stupid idea that achieved nothing and made a float that would be difficult to cast with little or no enhancement of bite detection.
