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Posted 08:16, 3 February 2012
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- The world is a changing !! I absolutely love the Isles of Scilly, and for the life of me I can never work out why the place is not crawling with visiting anglers. The place is like heaven on earth – it inspires and moves me in way like Ireland and the Channel Islands do. But as much as I never need much of an excuse to head over to the Isles of Scilly and see my mate Del, I would never have imagined only a few years back that I would actually be going over for a weekend in February to go and photograph wrasse fishing. I can remember saying to a friend only a while back that if they wanted to go over there then they were best off leaving it until later in the year, but then Del goes and starts getting into this whole wrassing on plastics thing and lo and behold he’s smashing them. Right now. Read his new blog here and you will get a sense of what he’s uncovering.
- Yes, the Isles of Scilly to me are like a kind of mecca if you are into big pollack and mullet from the shore, plus your more regular species like congers, huss etc. And of course a place like that is crawling with wrasse. It kind of goes without saying. Remember when bass used to be a “late spring, summer and early autumn species”, and wrasse were a “summer and early autumn” fish ? These are generalisations intended to highlight how much things have and are changing, but in essence they were how most shore anglers felt. Some people say that fishing’s all been done and that there is nothing more to find out or discover. So how come only a few years ago the wrasse was considered a bait only fish that you by mistake caught on lures sometimes ? How come there are guys out there right now catching wrasse on plastics when most shore anglers are chasing cod and whiting ? In warmer waters it was not that many years ago that milkfish were considered essentially uncatchable, but a frighteningly talented South African guide worked out how to nail them (and holy cow do they go !!). It’s been a hell of a mild winter, I grant you that, but it goes to prove that fishing is never going to be fully decoded, and I have to say that I like that. Nature laughs at our inept attempts from time to time does she not ?
- So I am jumping on the helicopter this afternoon that will take me on the short journey from Penzance to St. Mary’s in the Isles of Scilly. Am I excited ? Well I woke up at about 1am last night with my brain just racing, put it that way. I did get back to sleep in the end, but I can’t wait to get over there. I have been in the game long enough to know that a trip like this in February is a bit of a gamble with the weather etc., but it does seem with the forecast that Del and I can tuck away if needs be and potentially smash a few fish for my cameras. I also want to get a true sense of Del’s growing lure “problem” !! If I can over the weekend I will get some stuff up on the blog, but for now please wish us luck and let’s see what happens………..
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Posted 07:06, 1 February 2012
- Can you imagine if you’d been told at school that you were going to need to learn Japanese because later on in life you were going to wish that you could actually understand it. When I was about 18/19 my spoken French was pretty good, and although I can still get by, it has suffered through not using it that much these days. But I love having at least an ok grasp of a foreign language like French, indeed I love the fact that France as a country has come onto my radar so much over the last few years as regards bass fishing. And so has Japan, but I just wish I could understand their language a bit……….
- I would guess that many of us are pretty similar in that we spend a “bit” of time on the old internet looking at various fishing websites, and of course the Japanese and Japanese influenced lure fishing tackle especially is without doubt becoming more and more an almost everyday part of UK and Irish fishing these days. Go look in your lure box and I bet you that many of them owe something to Japan. Now look at a nice shiny lure in a nice shiny packet and tell me if you understand one single word of what is written on the back in Japanese, because I don’t. Look at the screen grab above from the MegaBass website – it’s a lure that I would love to know something about for example, but I am just completely ignorant of what is written there in Japanese. And how I wish I could understand it.
- But shiny fishing tackle aside, it’s the whole sharing of fishing info and techniques that I think we are missing out on by this whole language barrier. The sport of fishing is just huge in Japan, as indeed it is in the US for example, and I am utterly convinced that we could learn a lot of good stuff from the Japanese anglers – as indeed I am sure that they could learn from us. If there is one thing that this whole social media explosion has done for fishing it has to be the ease with which we can share information and experiences on a global scale – but the simple fact is that different languages are a barrier, and especially when you have languages as different as Japanese is to English. I don’t like being ignorant and to be honest it frustrates me that I have not one clue about the Japanese language.
- Does it matter though ? Well it depends on how you see the world I suppose. Many years ago I thought that us UK anglers were on top of it when it came to saltwater fishing techniques especially, but that belief was purely me being ignorant of how other anglers around the world were fishing. Sure, we are pretty much on top of things when it comes to fishing for the species we have in our waters (or are we ? Look at how the wrasse was until only recently essentially a bait-only species), but over time I guess that I became more and more interested in how other anglers around the world went about their fishing. And then you go on from there and begin to wonder how some of these perhaps “foreign” techniques and ways of doing things might in fact be applied to some of what we do. And vice versa of course.
- Some kinds of fishing are just more universal I guess. Fly fishing is fly fishing the world over. Sure, catching GTs and trout on the fly almost is beyond comparison, but it’s still fly fishing at the end of the day. Staring at two rods on a tripod down on the beach is the way a lot of saltwater fishing is done in the UK, but it is simply not a global way of fishing. Lure fishing is though, and perhaps this is why so many of us see such symmetry between fly fishing and lure fishing. A lure can be almost anything, but at the end of the day you attach a lure to a line and put it out there the world over, and all lure fishing therefore is essentially similar in some way as fly fishing is. And if you are big into lure fishing in the UK and Ireland then at some time or another what they do in Japan as regards their lure fishing is going to come onto your radar.
- Now as much as we perhaps see ourselves as some kind of superpower on the world stage, when it comes to fishing tackle I would guess that Japan sees us as pretty insignificant as regards volumes of tackle that is sold. Or at least they used to. Times are a changing though – check out a fully English version of the DUO website for example (see here). Huge credit to this fantastic lure company for doing this, and we can only hope that more follow suit. The numbers of anglers in the UK and Ireland is never going to stack up when compared to the numbers of anglers in Japan, but this whole lure fishing thing is just exploding with interest over here. And business is business. Look at the Japanese fishing tackle brands that are now so readily available for us to buy here in the UK and Ireland – and note that they weren’t “over here” only a few years back. Another five years down the line and I bet you we see even more – and on the flipside I hope we see more UK fishing tackle companies getting serious about lure fishing and making gear for us that suits our needs. Perhaps some of this UK lure fishing gear will then begin to make a few waves abroad ?
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Posted 09:26, 30 January 2012
- I should begin this review by saying that I am not actually looking for a braid replacement. I read or hear about the odd problems that some anglers have with braid from time to time, but for some reason it doesn’t happen to me. When I used to do a bit of tournament casting I hardly ever got crack-offs, indeed I hardly ever got one when I was shore fishing with my multiplier reels (but then I used to service all my own reels and I had them all running safe. I knew them inside out, literally). I very, very rarely get a wind knot when I am fishing with braid (and yes, I underfill my spools probably more than most), and I don’t suffer random breakages with my knots. Now what I am categorically NOT saying is that I am some kind of line or casting guru – because it’s pretty obvious to anybody who fishes with me that I’m not !! But the braids I use these days just work really well for me and as such I am not (or perhaps was not) looking to change from braid to something else………..
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- So we come to this new Berkley NanoFil line – a “Uni-Filament” fishing line that to give credit to Berkley was launched last year with a fair bit of fanfare, and especially in the US. Somebody I know kindly gave me a spool at the Tackle and Guns show last October and asked that I use it and see what I thought. Which I have done. I spooled it up before I headed over to Ireland for my last trip of 2011 and have made sure to use it in all kinds of conditions since then, and on one occasion especially I was running back to my camera rucksack and chopping and changing between a spinning reel with NanoFil on and another (same size) spinning reel with that bright green Daiwa Tournament 8-braid on in 20lb breaking strain. The spool of NanoFil that I was given is the 6.9kg – essentially 15lb breaking strain to you and I.
- First off, I have had no problems at all with knotting this Berkley NanoFil (and I get no problems with knotting braid either). I have read about various issues and I see that Berkley even supply a leaflet with the spool that advises on the use of particular knots. Good on them, and I wish other tackle companies would be more proactive like this, but from the off I used my regular braid to mono/fluoro knot and it’s worked just fine – see here for the knots(s) I use. I have had no random breakages with the line and it feels perfectly strong when you fight a fish or indeed try and wrench a lure out of a snag. From my time so far with NanoFil I don’t feel that it’s offering me any kind of abrasion resistance advantage, but then I did not expect it to. So far this NanoFil is working just fine for me, but is it working a whole load better than these 8-strand braids that I tend to lure fish with ? Should I be changing over to it ?
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- “You can expect your casting distances to soar by over 50% over mono of the same breaking strain” – I have taken this quote directly from the Berkley video that you can watch here. Now is it only me, or have other anglers picked up on something here ? One of the selling points of NanoFil is that it is a low diameter mainline when compared to mono – which it is. So logic then says that of course it should be casting further than the equivalent breaking strain mono, indeed if it did not then there would be something seriously wrong with it !! I know little about science, but the thinner line SHOULD be outcasting the thicker line should it not ? So excuse me for not quite jumping around in wonderment at that statement above. Note here that this 15lb Nanofil’s stated diameter is 0.134mm – Daiwa Tournament 8-braid in 15lb is stated at 0.10mm, 4-strand PowerPro braid at 0.18mm, and a regular mono at 15lb is of course 0.35mm.
- Don’t for one second get me wrong though. Berkley NanoFil casts very well. I love the way it comes off the reel so smoothly, and I have not had one single hint of a wind knot yet. It is a very easy line to fish with and I can’t find anything about it that I don’t actually like. Sure, it feels very different to these 8-strand braids that I tend to use most of the time, but I would disagree with the bloke in that Berkley video who says that it “feels and handles much like a supple monofilament”. I can’t recall ever fishing with a mono line that felt remotely like NanoFil – NanoFil feels like NanoFil if that makes sense. Kind of like a bit of a wiry feeling braid if that makes any sense, but it is feels supple and of course it does not stretch. Much like braid.
- Much like braid. This one thought keeps coming back to me. For me to switch over to using this NanoFil for all of my lure fishing I need to find something in it that I feel is giving me a direct advantage over the lines I am already using – and as I said earlier, I just don’t get any problems with the lines I am currently using. So I come back to the casting thing. Most of what I read about in relation to this NanoFil talks about the casting qualities. These 8-strands just fly for me, indeed so do the good 4-strands. So does mono. But does NanoFil cast further than say a good 8-strand braid of the equivalent breaking strain ?
- Look, NanoFil casts great, but I don’t for one second feel that it is giving me any extra distance over the lines I am already using, indeed there have been a couple of occasions when I have felt that my 8-strand braid was outcasting the NanoFil. I have no facts and figures to back any of this up – it’s all on feel and what I can see, but I had a particular morning in Ireland late last year when I had a strong wind that was across and into me (imagine facing north, with a strong ENE wind if that makes sense). This was when I kept on changing reels as I described earlier, because I was convinced that the NanoFil was almost getting knocked down a bit in the wind. If you play golf you will know what I mean when a certain kind of wind knocks your ball down. The 8-strand braid just seemed to cut through this kind of wind direction a bit better. I can’t say the distance differences were big, because they weren’t, but I could definitely feel the difference between casting the two kinds of mainlines. Also bear in mind the 8-strand I was using was 20lb and the NanoFil was 15lb.
- If you are having issues with braids then this Berkley NanoFil is seriously with a look. It works great, and I would guess that from my experience with Berkley lines over the years (remember that old bright green Trilene that was as strong as rope ?) there is every chance that NanoFil for example which is stated at 15lb (6.9kg) breaking strain might break well above this. Please note that this is pure speculation on my part and I have nothing at all to back it up. These 8-strand braids seem to be pretty accurate on their breaking strains, and perhaps this is where some “issues” arise from – the fact that many lines don’t actually break near their stated breaking strains, and as such we perhaps have almost come to expect that a 20lb line for example breaks at MORE than 20lb. Again, that is speculation on my part, but it’s a hunch I have had for a while. Take a line that genuinely breaks at 20lb and then put a knot in it and it’s now breaking at less than 20lb. It’s a fact. Knots weaken lines and you simply have to allow for it when picking a breaking strain to use.
- But will I be changing over to Berkley NanoFil ? No. I think it’s a good mainline, but so far I have not found it to be better than the mainlines I am currently using. I get on great with the lines I use, and I will continue to play around with the NanoFil that I have on one of my reels, but as hard as I have tried, so far it just is not proving to be any better than the stuff I am fishing with at the moment. But, Berkley NanoFil does seem to be another viable option for lure fishing especially – and if this Berkley NanoFil is a first generation “Uni-Filament” fishing line, where perhaps will the next generations of these kinds of lines go ?
