Yes I do I still have my original optonics, @Gingerbus has some 1950/60s carp rods which I still need to go and look at
@Soggz you need to get out on the lake, there is ultra low air pressure over the UK at the moment which is ideal carp fishing conditions
My bite alarm as a kid was made by my uncle, a TV engineer. It was a tobacco tin with battery, buzzer and contacts with a bent knitting needle for the trigger and another for the rod rest.
Back in the good old days we used a piece of bread dough pinched to the line to detect a bite . These days I fish even more simply with just rod, reel, line, hook and cheese or luncheon meat bait. No bite alarms or boilies for me. Back in the day when I carp fished with my old brother during winter, smaller hooks and single maggot bait caught fish, but mainly roach and rudd and the occasional carp.
That’s why I’m digging me stuff out! Easier than going out down there beach all the time. That always takes more planning. And now the van is roadworthy, I can just go up the toad to Shearwater to Wiltshire and fish out of it.
It’s Yes - I can see that a good design would indeed change pitch depending on how hard your rod was being tugged.
Shearwater is shut to fishing due to too many non fishing idiots. They have had all sorts of problems with the number of people going, one day 60 parking tickets were given out due to them parking on the road. The fishing is bad anyway as most of the fish are in very poor condition due to bad fishing.
I think it shut years ago. Frome AA has some good stretches of river and a lake at the lighthouse on the ski slope or the Bath club has a few lakes. For day tickets Todbar near Mear is good. I’ve taken a back seat on carp fishing it’s got to busy full of loud people so am enjoying the rivers again.
See? Well out of touch with it all. That’s what happens, when you do ‘real fishing’ down the beach. I used to fish the river down behind B and T’s, but Im not sure you can, now.
