I originally published this review on the TryAngling website but we’re in the process of redesigning that site and part of the plan is to move tackle reviews, catch reports and so on to this blog for instant publishing.
I will be the first to admit that I am no longer in the first flush of youth (anyone who knows me will be nodding their head at this stage, if they are not in hysterics) and that some of my faculties are no longer as sharp as they used to be. One of the first things to deteriorate are your eyes and whilst I can still see a quarter of an inch of the tip of a Drennan “Stillwater blue” at forty yards (it’s a float), anything closer than arm’s length tends to blur nowadays. This is aggravated by poor light such as first thing in the morning and last thing in the evening and means that the simple act of threading anything less than six pound mono through the rings of any rod slimmer than my barbel rods has become very difficult. When it comes to setting up one of my twenty foot match rods with three pound braided mainline then the air can turn blue, which is not a good idea when you spend as much time teaching kids as I do and the last thing I want is for young Rodney to go home with a colourful new non-fishing vocabulary.
I have found a new product marketed by Ultra Fishing Tackle that enables me to set up the long match rod in any light, even total darkness, in no time at all and it all but eliminates the risk of missing out one rod ring half way. (Isn’t it funny but you never notice you’ve missed one until you have finished shotting up your stick float shirt button style?)
This very useful little tool is in the form of a needle with an elongated eye, the line is threaded through the eye and pulled towards the blunt end where it is trapped by the taper of the eye. The pointed end is then passed through all the rod rings, pulling the line after it. Should you drop it, it will not be pulled back through the rings - which is an advantage when threading a fly rod with heavy fly line behind the leader. I now own three or four of these tools and use them every time as they speed up all operations, even with heavy line through large rings.
This item is an essential for every tackle box, even if you can still tie spade end size 24’s to 8oz hook lengths by hand under the stairs…! It will speed up the threading of any rod, particularly in bad light.
Update, 9 April 2006: If you have any trouble obtaining this product from your local tackle dealer, contact Shaun Stenton at Ultra Fishing Tackle Limited on 024 7671 6500.
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