Educate me.............

[The Sweetcorn Kid]

I guess that the clue is in the name, I'm very new to trotting so am still very raw with it. So, what differentiates between short and long trotting, or am I missing the point completely?

[DontKnowMuch]

One methods for those with good eyesight and ones for those, well , you can guess :hahaha:

Seriously long trotting is an excellent method to use, I find, on the smaller, clearer types of river where you can target them at range away from where you are standing/sitting. Very good for searching out stretches of river for the bigger fish. Control is the key to finding out how they want a bait presenting on the day.

[Snape]

I don't think there is a difference per se.
Long trotting is just letting the float run out further. I think (?). I am no expert at all.
I do recall reading Jack Hargreaves talking about long trotting and how he once knew a man who had a flag on his float which allowed him to see it from a long way off. He supposedly successfully trotted up to 2 fields downstream!

[BobH]

And don't be affraid of a large float and lots of lead shot ?

If you have the Float weighted corectly, you can see the float for a long distance and the bites will be the same as using too light a float.

The knack is the get the float going under control and pulling of the reel without aid of your finger or thumb.

Stopping the float to allow the light tell tail shot to ride up over the bars or a shallow area in the river is the bit that takes years to learn, but it's great fun learning ?

Bob

[Vole]

In the beginning was "Swimming the Stream": you swung your rig upstream as far as was comfortable/possible (we're talking poles or pretty rubbish "winch" reels here), let it run downstream, following it with your rod/pole top, then hoiked it out and repeated, until interrupted by a fish.
This is why your river pitch is still called a "swim".
Then came reels which actually spun and had a big enough drum to retrieve line at a useful pace, and you could let the float run on...I've no idea who termed it "trotting".
Nottingham seems to have been the town where the breakthrough happened, with chaps like Coxon, Bailey, Bendigo and J.W. Martin becoming local legends.
Then someone told them or their heirs about a river in Hampshire, reachable by Train...

Meanwhile, in Sheffield, the local waters were so polluted that the only way to make a day's fishing bearable was to fish a match. A whole new set of criteria were needed in a reel - light (contracted drum, hollowed out at the back)and fast (smooth-running, and with a quick release to undo tangles quickly - seconds counted - and a shallow arbour). With pegs often as little as ten yards apart, line capacity was not an issue; twenty or thirty yards would suffice for anything. You could trot, but not for long. The apotheosis of the Sheffield reel would be the Rapidex, I guess.

Try loading one of the Rapidex's forbears with enough dressed silk to trot sixty yards and then persuade a barbel to stop, without breaking a gut cast, and you'd wedge the thing solid, so Nottingham reels went their own way: large capacity, wide drum, pillars to wind the line on to, to keep weight down; and an adjustable drag on the best models. And no built-in line-guard, though a "Bickerdyke" style guard could easily be fitted.

Meanwhile, on the Thames, men were spinning by pulling coils of line off the winch and pulling the lure back as per fly-fishing; float fishing was still with a pole, or a general purpose rod - Patrick Chalmers description of his armoury is positively depressing. It was left to those Nottingham men travelling down to Christchurch to bring Long-trotting to the national consciousness; they developed the Nottingham pattern rod from the deal butt, lancewood tipped model of J.W. Martin's youth to the
whole-cane butted, split-cane middle-and-tip of his prime, and proceeded to show the Londoners (one of whom had stocked the Stour, and thence, accidentally the Avon, with barbel) exactly how to extract big roach, chub and barbel from the fast chalk-streams.

Eventually, we caught up, with a twist: the development of nylon meant you could fit an awful lot of line onto a Rapidex, and that, teamed with a 12' Taperflash, was the 1960's Thamesman's combo of choice. Or so I'm told by a 1960s Thames man... Trotting on the slower flows of the Thames made line wound onto pillars a bit of a nightmare to trot with - all them bleedin' corners in it - and is certainly why turned arbours are preferable to pillars, for me at least.

I'm pretty rubbish at actually trotting, but I have, late in life, learned that one of the prime mistakes to avoid is that of trying to fish every inch of water in front of you - cast downstream and across, and the apparent sacrifice of ten yards of water will pay big dividends in terms of tackle control and ease of feeding/groundbaiting. As Dave Harrell put it, its better to trot a yard of water well, than ten yards, badly.

A very small tip - a couple of hackle feathers jammed into the top float rubber and trimmed to suit,can provide an almost weightless "flag".

[Snape]

In the beginning was "Swimming the Stream": you swung your rig upstream as far as was comfortable/possible (we're talking poles or pretty rubbish "winch" reels here), let it run downstream, following it with your rod/pole top, then hoiked it out and repeated, until interrupted by a fish.
This is why your river pitch is still called a "swim".
Then came reels which actually spun and had a big enough drum to retrieve line at a useful pace, and you could let the float run on...I've no idea who termed it "trotting".
Nottingham seems to have been the town where the breakthrough happened, with chaps like Coxon, Bailey, Bendigo and J.W. Martin becoming local legends.
Then someone told them or their heirs about a river in Hampshire, reachable by Train...

Meanwhile, in Sheffield, the local waters were so polluted that the only way to make a day's fishing bearable was to fish a match. A whole new set of criteria were needed in a reel - light (contracted drum, hollowed out at the back)and fast (smooth-running, and with a quick release to undo tangles quickly - seconds counted - and a shallow arbour). With pegs often as little as ten yards apart, line capacity was not an issue; twenty or thirty yards would suffice for anything. You could trot, but not for long. The apotheosis of the Sheffield reel would be the Rapidex, I guess.

Try loading one of the Rapidex's forbears with enough dressed silk to trot sixty yards and then persuade a barbel to stop, without breaking a gut cast, and you'd wedge the thing solid, so Nottingham reels went their own way: large capacity, wide drum, pillars to wind the line on to, to keep weight down; and an adjustable drag on the best models. And no built-in line-guard, though a "Bickerdyke" style guard could easily be fitted.

Meanwhile, on the Thames, men were spinning by pulling coils of line off the winch and pulling the lure back as per fly-fishing; float fishing was still with a pole, or a general purpose rod - Patrick Chalmers description of his armoury is positively depressing. It was left to those Nottingham men travelling down to Christchurch to bring Long-trotting to the national consciousness; they developed the Nottingham pattern rod from the deal butt, lancewood tipped model of J.W. Martin's youth to the
whole-cane butted, split-cane middle-and-tip of his prime, and proceeded to show the Londoners (one of whom had stocked the Stour, and thence, accidentally the Avon, with barbel) exactly how to extract big roach, chub and barbel from the fast chalk-streams.

Eventually, we caught up, with a twist: the development of nylon meant you could fit an awful lot of line onto a Rapidex, and that, teamed with a 12' Taperflash, was the 1960's Thamesman's combo of choice. Or so I'm told by a 1960s Thames man... Trotting on the slower flows of the Thames made line wound onto pillars a bit of a nightmare to trot with - all them bleedin' corners in it - and is certainly why turned arbours are preferable to pillars, for me at least.

I'm pretty rubbish at actually trotting, but I have, late in life, learned that one of the prime mistakes to avoid is that of trying to fish every inch of water in front of you - cast downstream and across, and the apparent sacrifice of ten yards of water will pay big dividends in terms of tackle control and ease of feeding/groundbaiting. As Dave Harrell put it, its better to trot a yard of water well, than ten yards, badly.

A very small tip - a couple of hackle feathers jammed into the top float rubber and trimmed to suit,can provide an almost weightless "flag".

Excellent stuff, most interesting.... Many thanks Vole. :hat:

[Weyfarer]

Knowlegeable, concise and accurate. More of the same please Vole.

[Mark]

A very nice read Vole.

[Vole]

Thanks for those kind words , but I'm cowering behind the cyber-sofa with a tin hat on, waiting for a West Midlands type to tell me off and fill in a gap or three... they must have been doing something before the Abu 501...

On one of TPBTW's forebears, a gent with a lovely collection of David Slater reels did a cracking article - I wonder if he could be found and prevailed upon? Slater made excellent Nottingham-style wooden reels, but also pioneered the Sheffield style, too - I think he patented the annular line guard, with a groove cut into the rim of the spool to clear it, the forerunner of the Rapidex's cage.
I only have one Slater-latch reel, a 3" Sheffield pattern with no check - and no maker's name.
Spins like a dream, and just feels "right", in the same way that the Trudex and Speedia do. I'd love to get my paws on a 3 3/4 or 4" model, especially a Zephyr or "combination type, with an unwarping spool back of brass or aluminium.
Slater was based in Newark, which, while not exactly between Nottingham and Sheffield, isn't too far from either. I bet there were some interesting "discussions" between some of his customers!

[Tony1964]

Nottingham seems to have been the town where the breakthrough happened, with chaps like Coxon, Bailey, Bendigo and J.W. Martin becoming local legends.

This certainly ties in with the fact that the Wallis cast, which wasn't actually invented by FWK Wallis, was known as the Nottingham cast.
FWK Wallis became very well known for his expertise with the Nottingham cast and so it is more often called the Wallis cast to this day!