sight bobs...
Posted: Sat Sep 17, 2011 4:41 pm
OK, this is hardly traditional...I put my hands up to that straight away... but after a bottle of nice (strong) red wine on my birthday weekend I must ask, - do any of you guys use sight bobs for carp fishing? I suppose the subject just about fits into float fishing for carp, which is traditional.. and so I shall press on, because anything that is not about bolt-rigging boilies at a distance must be at least, vaguely, in the right camp... So here we go..
Sight bobs, I love 'em, and they work for me. Unlike a float, they lie flat on the surface and, if the wind blows, they drift naturally with a drifting, sometimes rising bait; - i.e - they do not "rudder" the bait, as a float does...
It's a cross between freelining and nymphing/dry fly fishing: not really float-fishing at all, and bobs are both astonishingly visible and very sensitive. I've come to see, through the use of sight bobs, how Walker was (obviously) right about carp being neurotic about resistance. The fish cannot possible feel the sight bob, but you see the tentative jerks, the testing takes that no alarm would ever register: then the sight-bob slides away into the depths. I use no shot or putty because, as I've explained, the drift of the bob "keeps time" with the wind, and often the take comes while the bob is drifting..It's all so natural. I usually use small and medium sized bobs, although the larger sizes can be useful in choppy conditions. Effective range is about 20 metres, but, above all, using a sight bob is effective, subtle and tremendous fun! Am I alone in using them?
Sight bobs, I love 'em, and they work for me. Unlike a float, they lie flat on the surface and, if the wind blows, they drift naturally with a drifting, sometimes rising bait; - i.e - they do not "rudder" the bait, as a float does...
It's a cross between freelining and nymphing/dry fly fishing: not really float-fishing at all, and bobs are both astonishingly visible and very sensitive. I've come to see, through the use of sight bobs, how Walker was (obviously) right about carp being neurotic about resistance. The fish cannot possible feel the sight bob, but you see the tentative jerks, the testing takes that no alarm would ever register: then the sight-bob slides away into the depths. I use no shot or putty because, as I've explained, the drift of the bob "keeps time" with the wind, and often the take comes while the bob is drifting..It's all so natural. I usually use small and medium sized bobs, although the larger sizes can be useful in choppy conditions. Effective range is about 20 metres, but, above all, using a sight bob is effective, subtle and tremendous fun! Am I alone in using them?