Feeder - Take your pick(er)

I have been pondering which day to go fishing this week. Looking at the weather, Thursday seems to be the best day of the week, down here in the south east. This will be my first chance to try my new rod. For a while now I have had trouble using my feeder rod. After ten months of fishing there are still some basics that I have missed out on.

Hmmm...

Pondering my options I was looking at the choice of rods out there and realised that there are all sorts of 'descriptive' names attached to rods that at best are confusing and at worst are misleading. I wanted a less powerful feeder rod that would not constantly end up throwing my feeders onto the far bank, but they all seemed to be big rods like my existing feeder. Smaller rods are listed and they are called 'picker' rods. Why? What's the difference?

Apart from the length, my picker rod is a lot thinner than the feeder

In the old days before the internet it would have been a case of trawling through the magazines, books and catalogues, looking for some explanatory write up and trying to make sense of one-way information. Today, however, it is a much simpler problem to solve. First, attack the internet via a search engine such as Google (there are others apparently). These days, this tends to turn up a myriad of sales listing and can be even more confusing, but it is always worth a try. Failing that, the next port of call is a forum.

There are lots of angling forums out there, I spent several months exploring the forums and eventually found one I liked, coincidentally with a similar name to this blog. The forum is MaggotDrowning.com. The post I made there asking what the difference between a picker and a feeder rod is, can be found HERE along with a goodly selection of replies. The upshot of this is that it appears shorter 'feeder' rods are called 'picker' rods. This is another one of those confusing facts that is not obvious to the newcomer, like me. As far as I can make out, there is no hard and fast rule at which point a picker becomes a feeder but it is around the 9-10ft mark as my 'feeder' is 11ft long and my new picker is 8ft long.

I will be trying out my new rod this week (Thursday looks like a good day) along with my latest bait experiment - my Red Dog method mix - See HERE. I am also going to try a new, to me, method of pre-rigging the rods. Recently I was made aware of a really useful looking accessory.

The Preston Innovations Spool Safe looks like the perfect answer to my current dilemma. I have more rods than reels and this week I would like to take my new picker and my existing feeder rod with me to get some sort of comparison. Before I rush of and buy one, I will try the theory out. One rod will be fully assembled, complete, and the other will be fully assembled but with just the spare spool filled with line. This time I will secure the line on the reel and place it in a small plastic bag, attached to the rod with some super-soft garden wire. If it works, I will invest in a Spool Safe, next time I am buying some tackle.  

Ralph.