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Pub Ammo - Angling Inventions!
Angling Inventions - We take a lot of things for granted in our fishing, so just spare a thought for the guys who came up with the original ideas.
The Arlesey Bomb Many decades ago, before we were all spoiled by modern fishing tackle, you had the choice of the drilled bullet or coffin lead to get your bait to range – aerodynamics weren’t really thought of. Then came the Arlesey bomb.
Created by angling legend Dick Walker, it was originally constructed to solve the issue of casting to range, needed to reach the big perch that resided in Arlesey Lake. The teardrop shape of the bomb was aerodynamic enough to hit the distance required and the piece of tackle is now resident in every angler’s box across the country.
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Monofilament Line Decent fishing is taken for granted today, but 80 years ago anglers were still using the stretched intestines of household pets to mount their hooks on. That was until 1939, when American chemical firm DuPont invented monofilament. Back then it was stiff and wiry, being an extrusion from nylon – a material the same company had invented the year before. All monofilaments stem from that eureka moment.
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Gore-Tex Clothing When it comes to keeping yourself dry out on the bank, Gore-Tex is one of the best materials you can use. This brilliantly waterproof yet breathable material was actually invented by accident back in 1966 by New Zealanders John Cropper and father and son duo Wilbert and Robert Gore.
The trio were looking for a way of stretching heated PTFE to produce such a material. One day, frustrated by the work, he gave the PTFE a quick yank instead of a slow stretch and the result was Gore-Tex.
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Electronic Bite Alarms It’s incredible to think that anglers have been fishing with electronic bite alarms for 60 years! And once again it’s thanks to that man Dick Walker. Back in the 1950s Walker produced the Heron Bite alarm – based on the homemade electronic bite indicators he’d been using with great success for big fish, specifically carp.
The first design used a modified cycle lamp with the line sitting between two contacts so that when a fish pulled the line out it created a circuit that sounded a tone. Pretty basic stuff, but all modern alarms stem from that thinking.
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The Hair Rig It could be argued that for pure increases of catches, the hair rig is the most important angling invention ever. It’s now used in all areas of fishing, but was first thought of for carp. Inventors Kevin Maddocks and Len Middleton came up with the idea to allow the bait to be separate from the hook – better for presentation and for getting the hook into the fish’s mouth.
Developed in the early 1970s, the legend is that the original hairs, and the genesis of the name for the rig, came from the fact that the anglers used real hair to rig the baits on the hook.
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The Method Feeder The modern flat-bed Method feeder that we’re all familiar with all started back in the 1980s with the Emstat feeder. This was the brainchild of match angler Dave Hough, but soon evolved into the Fox ‘flat-ish-bed’ Method feeder, before Preston Innovation’s Andy Findlay went proper flat with a homemade feeder that spawned what many view as the proper original flat-bed, the Korum Method feeder.
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