Room 101 Floats

[DaceAce]

What floats do you find worthy of being consigned to Room 101; watch the video to find my choices:

[Bob Brookes]

He's not wrong.

[CrayCane]

Good film Mark with some excellent advice.
Pete

[Barbelbonce]

An unusual picture of Ivan wivaaaaat a fag on!I learnt a lot from the film and cannot disagree.
But I enjoy making nice-looking floats and am reduced to near tears when I lose a favourite!
Maybe I've been making them just to look at indoors.......?
Thanks, Mark.
Mike

[Dave Burr]

I agree with the bulk of what you have said Mark, many of the homemade floats I see are poorly balanced and insensitive.

I disagree however with your comments about the fluted Avons and have used them a lot on the Wye. When trotting, I am usually wading and letting the float go directly downstream so, many of the claims made regarding the steering and such, do not come into play. However, a 'normal' Avon can get caught in the little vortices and boils along the way but, I am convinced that a fluted float will ride through them. As for holding back and allowing the bait to go ahead of a float, I think that this is largely not the case and most people have their bait tripping bottom behind the float. To keep the bait ahead takes some very fine balance in the outfit and a steady current, even then, the difference between knowing exactly where the bait is and it either dragging or flying up towards the surface takes a lot of practice.

[DaceAce]

An unusual picture of Ivan wivaaaaat a fag on!I learnt a lot from the film and cannot disagree.
But I enjoy making nice-looking floats and am reduced to near tears when I lose a favourite!
Maybe I've been making them just to look at indoors.......?
Thanks, Mark.
Mike

I think that by the time (1997?) I took that picture of Ivan he had had his heart operation (1993) and prior to the op he stopped smoking and never smoked again.

[John Milford]

Wasn't it a young (teenaged) Peter Drennan who used to make fluted Avon floats for Dick Walker and his pals? (I'm sure I've read that somewhere).

[DaceAce]

Wasn't it a young (teenaged) Peter Drennan who used to make fluted Avon floats for Dick Walker and his pals? (I'm sure I've read that somewhere).

Some fluted floats amongst this selection of early Drennan floats though still a design dead-end in my opinion:

Drennan floats.jpg

[Harry H]

Wasn't it a young (teenaged) Peter Drennan who used to make fluted Avon floats for Dick Walker and his pals? (I'm sure I've read that somewhere).

Here are the floats he came joint winner of Fishing magazines float making competition in 1964
s

[JAA]

Interesting that:

Might interest folk that Belgow Fluted Avons were machined out of box wood or beech, one piece of wood. They carried a quarter of the shot of a balsa equivalent I'd say. I stripped the paint off one to find this out... Like another poster, I like using mine



Agree on the antenna float for crucians, at least close in. Mine have some 5-10cm of 1.2mm cane, but that's only because they seem more stable with the body lower down the stick - I weight them (usually with solder wire on the stem) so two no. 10 sink the antennae and usually fish one of them almost on the hook - it doesn't come up that much when a cru. picks it up, a cm or two. 'Big' lifts tend to be tiny roach.

Long antennae floats always used to be for fishing in windy conditions - there was a range of those in late 1970's called 'wind beaters' I sill have an ancient 4BB one) and iirc they were shotted to the tip, but otherwise fished for conventional bites. Long bodies with the bulk weight under a surface tow do seem to work OK for that, but a long peacock quill waggler might work just as well faik.

I'd put all black tipped floats into the Room 101 - I've never had a situation when a hollow tip doesn't work and a black one does. Hollow tips are great things - I make quills with fluorescent tinted clear tips - for my own amusement - they are really are very easy to see under any conditions. I must try a 'scooped' hollow tip sometime.

I'd put all floats with glossed varnish tips into Room 101 - fluorescent tips are more visible if they have a matt finish.

I'd also put floats with inlaid feathers and such into the same room and have O'Brien grind them into powder.

That all said, I fish to please myself.