A change is as good as a rest

 

 

Fishing one method all the time can get a bit samey, and if you’re not careful can end up more like a chore than a pleasure. Although this hasn't happened yet with my lure angling, the changing seasons have triggered my need to revert back to some of my origins in angling.

As with most anglers starting out in the generations before the rise of the commercial water, one of the first methods I ever attempted to learn was to stare endlessly all day long at a little orange tip on the surface of the water anxiously waiting for it to disappear, pulled under by some unseen force. It was the strangely hypnotic action laced with the hopeful anticipation of the expected result that tapped into a basic need within me. This desire to catch fish has often been linked to a latent hunter gatherer instinct. Float fishing can be a bit like laying a trap then waiting to spring it at just the right time in order to catch whatever has fell for the ruse. It's the feeling that this simple event can give to the angler that sparks off a lifelong passion that some of us will never tire of.
Sometimes with fishing we will dip in and out from time to time getting a fix here and there only during the warmer months for some maybe, whereas others myself included, can barely go a few hours without thinking about where the next bite, run or take will come from and by what, and as importantly how it will happen. There are a myriad of different ways that have been concocted to catch fish and being humans we always like to keep it challenging, so we are forever devising more and more ways to stack the odds. Be it by totally new methods or tackle that sometimes stack the odds more in the favour of the fish. Ultimately though, as long as it scratches the itch or provides the necessary kudos we are seeking then we can find a method that works for us.

Sometimes however, I find it good to just sit quietly for a few hours casting a simple float no more than a rods length out into a small secluded pool, occasionally throwing a few hand full’s of ground bait and fishing kernels of corn on the hook to see what will come along.

Occasionally the float even disappears and the trap is triggered.