Technical Information
A Tip from "The Captain"
It's been a while since we last had a tip from good old Captain Haddock but he has come up with a gem - well worth the wait!
When small fish are feeding well but hard to get on the hook we often try a smaller hook, a slightly larger hook, lighter line, changing depth a little or even varying the shotting pattern just to put them in the net, but this is a stonewall tip that will help to be a great weight builder.
Forget the fancy stuff and switch to a size 2 eyed hook. Put a maggot on the hook but thread it all the way round to the eye. Now the only way the fish can get the bait is to virtually throw themselves on the hook. Now, at this point, we would probably retrieve, unhook the fish before going back in but this just wastes time and opportunity. LEAVE the rig in as more fish will quickly follow and when you do finally retrieve you will be pleased to note up to half a dozen fish on the hook. Not bad for one put in! A bit like mackerel fishing in a way. Six is about the maximum for a size 2 but more can be accommodated if you employ a much larger sea type hook but this will only work well if the hook is a very fine wire guage.
Try this and you'll soon see the potential for 50 - 60lbs silver nets even from modest venues!!
"Byron's Hearing" - 2nd January 2014
This comes about as a result of Byron not being able to hear Gary's comments viz. "it's only a skimmer Byron" as Byron is somewhat vertically challenged. The diagram below shows the solution as recommended by G2E but care must be excercised when employing this method. You will note that a critical angle of 300 is shown. Too shallow an angle and the sound will merely hit the bank below Byron's foot, to steep an angle will result in sound bouncing skyward and potentially becoming lost in the background echoes from the Big Bang (just imagine sometime in the future, on an alien world, the words "it's only a skimmer Byron" penetrate the ether, causing extraterrestials to question whether or not there is intelligent life elsewhere in the universe. The answer would undoubtedly be NO!).
Determining the angle at which the comments should be aimed at the water will be given by (a) the height of the sender and (b) the height (or lack of) of the recipient. Such processes are only required when one or both of the communicators differ critically in height or one is lying down (as would be apparent in this instance). Communicators of similar heights would still be able to pass messages effectively using normal horizontal methods.
