I am not a great one though for sitting over a line, waiting for a bite and feel that as a personal shortcoming. Patience, boy.
If anyone wanted to write up a simple guide to jigging for mackerel say, I would gladly link it to this blog.
Techniques must effective though, and have food in mind, rather than being that often hopeless ritual called ‘angling’, devised I suspect to allow men a break from their families .
I want to hear things that will help me really tune into the habits, temperament and movements of a particular fish.
What’s obvious to you maybe a revelation to the rest of us.
Lobster pots are a classic example of ‘design as solution’, and at their best, make use of materials to hand.
There’s a cove on Strumble Head we walk to (Porthsychan), where the willows in the scrub I’m sure are a traditional basket variety, which leads me to imagine them having been used to make pots by a fishing community long vanished.
As a post-industrial hunter-gatherer though, I see the plastic boxes, bottles and pipes around us as a valid equivalent to devise traps from.
Alkathene instead of hazel, and bakery-tray bases replacing wooden slats. These materials are resilient in sea-water, flexible, light, and have ‘negative buoyancy’, which means they need little weight to assist them to sink.
It’s the same basic stuff as sit-on kayaks are made from.
We are in a culture where every other sentence is mitigation of potential litigation, so I hasten to discourage you from stealing and jig-sawing up perfectly good bakery trays!! When I was fishing a lot of pots though, I must have got through quite a few hundred.
There are always a few grubby ones knocking around a locality, and I would feel no compunction about using them if you reckon they are out of the active food-chain. It is classic recycling.
Net is an unavoidable cost. If you buy a bale, you will have enough for life. There’s no point making-do with inferior garden netting. Also poly and nylon twines.. You will need to buy a netting needle, unless you want to be flash with the jigsaw and make one.
I found some trawl net crammed under a rock by the sea recently and have already had four pots out of it, and bits of large rope that wash in are sometimes worth untwisting for their twine, so you could make a cash-neutral version if you’re patient.
The main feature to look for in a base is a good set-back edge. This will protect the long-edge from chafing if the pot rolls. I don’t cut an entirely flat base, but keep an inch of side-wall all round, with more on the corners, as this keeps rigidity and helps the pot grip the seabed & to stack. I drill holes to secure 3 or 4 bent water-pipe hoops, and fix on 3 pipe top bars, though if you are short of that, you can jig bits of waste tray up into suitable sections. I use galvanised nails, though always dreamed of finding a suitable plastic fixture. In reality the nails last for years. Don’t try copper nails instead: they are too soft and you end up with bars hanging off pots in mid-season.
There are countless tricks to learn if you are going to make a batch of pots. A piece of wood to tuck under the centre bar and another longer one for when you come to nail the sidebars are invaluable. Get nails long enough to clinch, but try not to squash the main hoops. Once the frame is wrapped in net, that holds it all in place, so don’t get too fussy. Though it’s worth making sure you don’t leave nail ends proud, or they might puncture your gloves or scratch your kayak.
You need twine equivalent to your net for lashing (3mm). If you want to make your own net entrances, you will need a floppy, nylon twine for these. Entrances knitted from polyprop are too stiff. If you are short of nylon, or your source is too expensive, knit the ring and first row or two in poly.
I am rubbish at learning knots, and made up my own. The net knot is easiest learnt by unpicking a bit of existing net. and then retying it. I use a slip-knot for most tying, knotted at both ends to keep it tight. It is quick and disposable.
I start covering the frame by cutting a section of net that spans it both ways. The old way was to net up the top and ends separately, but this is a weak point if the pot rolls. (It did save net though.)
Also, if you bunch the net at each end and secure it to the frame, you will have an easy way to open the whole end by cutting one knot if you need to. (Try getting a bull-huss or conger out any other way!)
I then weave twine through the bottom of the net all the way round, and tie it with a series of slip-knots through holes I drill in the frame. If one fails then it is not the end of the world.
To get good ideas about how to make a pot, look up "lobster pots" in Google images.
I’ll describe how I make the “blind-eyes” and bait-strings etc in the next blog.