THE ULTIMATE ANGLING BUCKET LIST

Fish the Mersey on anything greater than say 8.2 metres and you'll struggle to hold bottom. It quite
literally screams through.
So even on the smallest tides, the whiting there tend to feed most heavily as the tide dies away. Yet just
a few miles up the coast at Blackpool, it's not worth turning out on anything less that the same 8.2
metres, as you'll be faced with hardly any run and even fewer fish.
Bearing in mind what I've just said about whiting not liking too much run but requiring some movement
to stimulate feeding, quite a few years ago we did some experimentation with small slider floats set to
present our baits within a few inches of the bottom, the idea being to use these when the run had virtually
gone, but with just about sufficient of it left to trot the float away from the boat to give the bait some
movement.
In addition to that, I also took along my small push net to get some shrimps which were kept alive in a
flowtroll floating live bait bucket which I'd brought back from America. Whiting love live shrimps, but
if you put them down on the bottom, they will instinctively burrow out of sight. So just off the bottom
is perfect.
The other draw back with shrimps is that to present them live, they need to be nicked on to a small fine
wire hook around three to four segments up from the tail, which unfortunately leaves them vulnerable
to being ripped off. So you have to be quick.
You could of course thread the hook down the centre of the body of the shrimp as you would a worm,
but then it's offered dead which reduces its appeal.
Float fishing presents them perfectly and shows up every little touch. Definitely a very exciting way to
fish when conditions are right. I've also used it under similar circumstances for black bream and for
tope, when everyone else using standard drop down tactics has been waiting for the tide to kick in again
and re-start their day.
For my final observation, let me say that I'm of that age where I remember regularly seeing boat anglers
fishing with wire three boomed paternosters, and pier fisherman with bells clipped to the ends of the
rods as bite indicators. But you know, just because an idea or an approach is antiquated, doesn't
necessarily mean it's also out of fashion with the fish.
Most traces, in fact most basic
tackle items, are no more than
updates and variations on a few
basic themes discovered and
implemented back in the 1960's
and 70's when I was first starting
out, one of the most useful of
which is still the wire paternoster.
I must admit to not having seen a
pat for many years. Then one day
while out with Tony Parry aboard
his charter boat 'Jensen II' fishing
the Mersey, he came out of the
wheel-house at slack water with
one he'd made and said here, put
this on. Complete with size four
hooks to probably thirty pounds
Tony Parry, Whiting full house
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