Making Reed Fishing Floats (bobbers) by hand

It has been a little bit of a strange week, I seem to have been stuck making a video that didn't want to be made; computer crashes, broken cameras, accidentally deleting scenes and then breaking the float I’d made.  Just before finishing the film I took my floats down to the lake and it all largely didn't seem to matter.

  Making Reed Fishing Floats Materials

There is a man in the garden with a gun

Image Above: A little silver thing.
Image Below Right: Filming in the garden.

I dropped my mother in law at the airport at about 5am and then cruised home to collect my tackle and head for the lake. At five thirty I was at my favourite peg with a float poking at the surface tension of a still lake. It was a slow start but eventually a shoal of small bream cruised past and I took half a dozen before they moved off trailing bubbles down the lake. The roach came a little later fat and greedy for breakfast. In the small bay where the lake widens a father and son were dealing with an eel the lad had caught and the excitement drew some spectators from the other anglers who had arrived while I was busy with the roach.

I left a little before nine with the feeling that I had lived almost a whole day and had yet to enjoy breakfast. Turning into the avenue I found a film crew setting up for a day’s shoot with cables and light gantries strung down the pavement only to converge on our neighbours house. I spent most of the morning packaging lures between visits to the bedroom window to keep ahead of the action. They were filming a new drama thriller for channel four about conspiracy theory called ‘Utopia’ and Liverpool was doubling up for London which was probably all down to cost.

I watched the stars (none of whom I could recognise) climb the garden walls with one of them brandished an automatic pistol. At one point they ran a small rail line down our back garden to carry the camera while the cast re-enacted what looked like a scene from the great escape. Two things struck me about the filming, you have to be so thin to work in front of the camera that some of the cast would only be a little heavier than my balsa lures. The other thing was that the crew employ a man whose sole job was to hold the replica gun while it was not being used in filming; a gun minder like a baby minder only with a gun.

In the afternoon I went off in search of welding rods along the dock road, the family came along for quick trip to Crosby beach and some bass scouting.



Image Below: Sculpture at Crosby Beach.

The Wrong Side of the Tracks

Image Above: Sefton park lake drained for repairs

I knew he was a fisherman; his eyes like mine were focused on the water, I had the pram and kids and he had a dog. I walked scanning the lake as far out as the reflections would allow and back in toward the shore and the path. As he passed three large carp of least ten pounds zoomed over a patch of low weed. I pointed them out and he stopped and told me the local anglers had been doing a bit of restocking on the quiet. I asked him about pike and he winked and said a few may have made it back in. The lake the largest of Liverpool’s park lakes was drained a little over four years ago for bit of a restoration project. Officially the fish were temporarily re-homed in other local park lakes by the council. I don’t know a fisherman who shares this view of what became of out fishy friends, what is certain is that what came out never went back in. So a lake that for most of childhood and teenage years was a mecca for anglers and kept more than a couple of local tackle shops in business is free of fishermen until the brave venture back, maybe I might be a bit braver.

Finding a bit of time in the afternoon I headed up to the north end of the city to a leg of the Leeds Liverpool canal. This had also been somewhat restored, but it was still the wrong part of town and I was conscious that I was spending an equal amount of time sizing up the locals as fishing. Having little success with the lures I took the bait caster off and replaced it with a small fixed spool spinning real loaded with three pound line,  tied on a homemade jig weighing a little over a gram and dressed with whip tail cut from washing up gloves.

Passing under a bridge to a more neglected stretch I spotted some movement at the surface and began working the opposite bank. Popping the jig just short of stone edge to the canal brought a bite and I was in, I landed a small bream as the water further up the stretch erupted. A group of lads playing football on the opposite bank had decide to launch a bottle attack on guy who had just walked past be on the tow path. Bottles gave way to bits of brick and rocks which lucky all missed him before they ran for it. I packed up and headed back south wondering if I will fish this water again. The fish was hastily returned without the customary photograph.

I spent the evening with the airbrush and some lures.

Image Below: Airbrushed lures