Fledger

[John Milford]

I picked up this old commercially made fledger a while back. I just wonder if anyone knows who made them? One of the float manufacturers I'm guessing?

It had a little barbed eye attachment when I acquired it. OK as a float eye, but not really up to the job of repeatedly casting nearly an ounce and I noticed it had worked a little wobbly through use. Not wanting to see it fly off, I whipped on a replacement eye using the same 24 AWG brass wire I use for floats.

[Olly]

I remember seeing and making these for tench fishing in the late 60s and early 70s.

I cannot recollect any commercial ones!

[John Milford]

I've just dug out the floats the fledger reminded me of. It seems pretty likely to me that whoever made these floats also made the fledger because of their marked similarity?

[Olly]

The fledger is also similar to Dennis Pye's pike floats! Mine were two pike pilot floats on a length of cane dowel, copying DP.
Later with hollow plastic they became - inline floats - as well.

My fledgers were cane stem with cork/balsa float bodies to make stand up. Lead wire being the weight.

[John Milford]

Mine's got a fairly substantial lead ball on it, with a buoyant (cork?) 'bob' to make it stand up.

The size of the 'bob' on the floats and their distinctive tapered stems look just the same as on the fledger.

Something about the floats is saying 'vintage Middy' to me, but it's little more than an inkling.