First Time Ledgering/Feeder Fishing

[Maceo]

I have to confess to having been a bit dismissive of ledgering in the past. I much prefer fishing rivers to still water and I enjoy the regular casting and excitement of the nibbles and the bites! This has meant that in about 38 years of fishing (on and off) I've never yet tried ledgering or feeder fishing.

But I have to admit I'm curious! I wonder how it'd suit the Thames where I'm regularly fishing. The water's only about 2 metres deep, if that. It's fairly slow moving and quite cloudy.

I've been looking around the "interweb" and I think that adapting one of my rods to a quiver tip is going to be the solution.

I see these "universal" tips advertised - does anyone have any experience of how universal they really are? Are they very easy to fit? Presumably they just replace the final section of your rod. I don't fancy having to sand away with wet and dry for hours and then and up with some floppy, badly-fitting thing falling off into the water or whatever!

I've also seen these 'Polaris Sidewinder' tips advertised, which claim to be better than regular quiver tips. Again, does anyone have any experience of these? Are they worth the extra couple of quid? What is this 'Perma Clip' they talk about? How does something like that work?

http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Polaris-Si...item4840708030


I think I pretty much understand how to make a ledger or feeder set up. My plan is to fish one rod on this and then float fish normally with another. Any problems foreseen with this plan? I guess as long as I don't let the float line drift over the ledger rig it should be OK!


Thanks as always for advice.

[Bungz]

you can get reasonable quiver rods for next to nothing.

Maver make decent budget rods, although I have never used one.

Id go with that for 30-40 quid than bodge a quiver tip on a existing rod.

http://www.mullarkeys.co.uk/fishing/...0/maver/10958/

Seem ok to me.

[BoldBear]

As Bungz said you can get a decent quiver rod for £30 or £40 nowerdays and unless you enjoy converting old tackle I wouldn’t bother going through all the bother of modifying an existing rod.

In the old days I used to make some of my own rods and I used to make a quivertip rod by sawing off the tip of a suitable rod then buying a ‘Donkey Top’ quiver and glueing that to the end of the top section.

I used to measure and fit the donkey tip as shown in the diagram below; then whip rings on the quiver tip.



I don’t think I would bother these days with so many inexpensive rods on the market.

Keith (BoldBear)

[Bungz]

It's a bit of a art too because you need to balance the insert with the rod, quite a skill unless you want a floppy uncastable mess of a rod :)

[northern eye]

Definately buy a new rod with quiver tips - All the brands do decent cheap rods to get you going. I wouldn't fish one float and one feeder rod at the same time, especially on a river. Your float will be drifting downstream, out of eye contact with your quivertip so whilst your watching the float sail away, you could be missing bite indications on the tip - your eyes will be all over the place trying to watch the tip and the moving float at the same time. Be a bit easier on a stillwater I guess, if you cast your float out so that you have the quivertip and the float within easy eye-sight of each other.

[Maceo]

Brilliant - thanks as always for the advice. Probably saved me hours of messing around trying to adapt one of my current rods!

The Maver rod that was linked to looks good too. I think I'll probably go for something like that.

Looking around, there seem to be light/medium/heavy rods available. I guess a medium would be best for the river conditions I've described?

[Bungz]

medium would be fine, you get 2 or 3 tips of different strengths to deal with different conditions.

[poddy]

i take the same approach as u suggested on most venues that i fish. 1 feeder/ledger rod for wotever may come along throughout the session (hopefully larger fish) and 1 for float fishing for the entertainment of casting and visual bites. as long as u choose ur spot quite sensibly for ur feeder you should be fine casting ur float in and out without tangles.

1 thing i would suggest instead of modifying ur rod to work with a tip is to simply use the rod as it stands and set up a bite alarm. this will indicate any bites u get and keeps ur mind free to concentrate on float fishing instead of worrying about watching ur tip all the time. just wait for the beeps and the battle begins. hope this helps

[chris.oldgit]

this may help :

http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/10FT-FEEDE...item19ca19b6a6

[bampah]

The sidewinder is just another quiver tip but instead of it being fixed to the top of the rod it is fixed to the side of the rod about a 1/4 of the way up. The permatip is taped to the rod and the tip is slotted into the clip so that it stands out at 45 degrees. There is a ring at the top of the tip which slips onto the line as it passes between two of the rod rings. By tightening up on the tension, the tip will assume a curve. Any run away bites will pull the tip in towards the rod but a fall back bite will allow the curve in the tip to straighten.
I use mine all the time as they are very sensitive but they really come into their own in windy conditions when the line and rod tip can be submereged without affecting the efficiency of the sidewinder tip.
Another advantage is in tight conditions as the rod does not need to be positioned at 90 degrees to the line but can be fished straight on. The sidewinder registers bites regardless of the angle.
Here's a video which explains it better than I.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5a9WVcV36kk