Tackle Tart

I have never considered myself a tackle tart usually getting by with the budget end of rods, reels and lines. I recently purchased a shakespeare odyssey rod for the princely sum of 26 Euro and it has served me well in the beginning of this season. I even splashed out on a Snowbee XS floating line on Ebay as even I could see that the ancient mill end I was using was spooking the trout with it’s half submerged profile and a lift off like the Red Sea parting. However when I decided to grab an hours fishing by the town bridge before picking up my sons from school, first cast I thought I had hooked a twig but this twig was the top twelve inches of the rod snapped off. I don’t remember do any damage to it and I don’t cast big heavy flies so its a mystery. The worse thing was the trout seem to sense my predicament and were leaping and doing backflips in the river so as to rub it in. I wandered along the river to kill the time and took some photo’s on my camera phone, spotted a few more likely looking trout holding spots and picked a bit of litter which is my pet hate.

So where do I go from here, do I stick with my cheap and cheerful rods or purchase something more technologically advanced in the Orvis, Greys, or even those Sage rods I usually have a play with every time I go in a tackle shop. I think my fishing skills are pretty much below the average so would a 300+ Euro rod really benefit me, plus the added worry that I would step on it, trap it in the shed door or leave it on the bankside or bus would make me a nervous wreck. Not to mention how I could justify spending more on a rod than a lot of the cars I have owned.

If I do get a new expensive rod my old leeda reel will look out of place so a new large arbour machined alloy reel ( I read all the free fly fishing catalogues ) will be required, next will be those 400 Euro waders to replace my sweaty rubber ones and I will have become a tackle tart.

The real deciding factor is I have four young boys who need constant re-shoeing, clothing and entertaining with expensive electronic trinkets so its going to be the budget route I think, as long as I am enjoying it and catching the odd fish then that’s okay.

This was the oddest bit of litter today, a bag containing two pairs of shoes, used but a few miles left in them yet. Seems a long way to go to dump shoes because they had not floated down stream.