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The last few years have seen a major change in the way we fish rivers across Europe. The 'lolly' has become the first choice float for anglers on the pole. Some of us might like to think we are fishing with something new. Nothing could be further from the truth as lollipop floats have been around for years. I first noticed them in Switzerland during the 1983 World Champs. Then they created only marginal interest in the UK. Back then there were simply not enough angler's using the pole on rivers to make the floats relevant. Even in France their use was limited, as most anglers still preferred large round bodied floats.
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Their full potential wasn't really understood here until the more recent 1999 Spanish World Champs. As well as the press exposure we started to see excellent ranges of lollipop's appear in the shops. Sensas and Milo were the two companies who led the way and soon anglers up and down the country were switched on to the potential of these floats.
Most anglers who started to use the floats looked on the lollipop as a blocking, or holding back, method as the float cuts down water resistance thereby allowing you to keep a bait dead still on the bottom, whilst using a supposedly lighter float. This was how I first started using 'lolly', I thought they were simply about presenting a still bait in the flow. What really opened my eyes to what they were all about was the article in Declic Peche, featuring Diego da Silva, which followed up on his brilliant performance in the European Championships on the Trent Embankment when he found bream that no one else could. He described how he used the floats to meticulously explore his swim by inching the float downstream, similar to a slow and meticulous plumbing of the swim.
I translated his article into English and put it in Matchangler's Declic section. Within a week we received an e-mail from none other than Kevin Wilmot, newly appointed Editor of Improve Your Coarse Fishing, who was most impressed with the article. I cannot claim that Diego's article alone changed the way people viewed 'lollys', but what was clear was that to fish them correctly, anglers had to do more than just use it for 'blocking'. My own experience bore this out when I started to pick up money in winter river matches by easing through fairly big lollipops and catching fish when most anglers in my section were blanking. I caught in flooded and normal conditions, provided of course that I got the float to move through the swim properly!
Making the lollipop work
To explain this better, lollipop fishing resembles feeder fishing on a river more than anything else. Feeder anglers talk about getting the critical balance just right. This means that you have just enough lead on the feeder for it to hold bottom but only just. When a fish picks up the bait it displaces the feeder and the feeder moves, the tip springs back and you get a clear drop back bite. To fish the lollipop correctly you have to get the same kind of critical balance on the float. It needs to be just holding the bottom against the flow so that when you pull back the float slowly you actually displace the bulk weight down the line which in turn allows you to inch it downstream. After the rig has run a few inches downstream you hold the float still again, ready to repeat the process once more. It's this perfect balance which allows you to get that meticulous examination of a swim that Diego described in his article.
A venue which flows - but only just!
I have fished for many years with the same small group of matchmen... Grip, Kevin and Perry, who have all appeared on the pages of Declic over the years. We were all convinced that lollipop's were the best winter floats for hard waters, not just for blocking in floods but for all types of fishing, because of the reasons outlined above.
We regularly fish a well known stretch of canal called the Wey Navigation, near the town of Woking. I say well known because when I was talking to Jan Van Schendel last year he knew of the venue, having won some 'dosh' there years ago when fishing with Bob Nudd during his "learning years". (Jan had spent many years fishing in England alongside Bob before they both emerged on the international scene in the early 80's).
The Wey 'Nav' is in fact a number of canalised sections of the river, designed to take boats around difficult sections of the River Wey itself. Like many rivers, made navigable during the 18th and 19th century, it was easier to build sections of canal to bypass fast flowing or singularly bendy stretches of river. The canalised sections are shallow, about 1.2 metres deep along the boat channel and between 14 and 16 metres wide. What makes this type of canal different from a closed canal system is that the river still flows through the canalised sections and there is a steady but slow current through all the sections.
Two years ago we started to look at using lollipop floats on the canal, we were not alone, other teams were doing the same thing. We practised the venue and quickly realised that we could not get the lollipops to work properly. The problem was simple, there was flow in the canal but it was only a slight. The lightest lolly's we had were 0.5 gram white Sensas and these were just too heavy.
You could sit and hold the bait with 0.5 grams without any problem but what you couldn't do was inch the bait through by just pulling back the float and easing it down. Because these floats were too heavy the flow alone was insufficient to move the weight on when you lifted it. The only way of moving the half gram olivette down the swim was to actually lift it and drop it further downstream again. This wasn't the sort of natural presentation we were looking for, and, despite using the smallest commercial floats available all we got was clumsy presentation... the floats simply were not right!
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If you can't buy a solution - make it!
It took two of our team, Grip and his friend Steve Bull, to come up with an answer which would work on the canal. What they did was to make some specialised lollipop floats for the canal which were tiny. The range of floats they made took between 4 number 10 and 6 number 8 shot and gave exactly the right range of shotting options to cover the different float conditions in the canal - we quickly christened them "minipops".
Ironically, I first mentioned that we were fishing with lollipop floats, the size of a 5 pence piece (smaller than a 10 cent coin), to Declic Editor Nicolas Beroud last year when he'd been describing some practise sessions on the Seine, in Paris, where Will Raison was catching big fish using 30 and 40 gram lollipops... and these were the size of CD's. Just goes to show how versatile 'lollys' can be!
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Grip gave me a set of his floats to try and I was sold on them straight away. These tiny floats covered the sizes needed to get this critical balance right in the lighter flow of the canal. What I found was that, depending on the section of canal and the rain we had, you would need a 4 no. 8 float on some days whilst on others the same float would just sit still and you had to use a lighter 4 no. 10 float to get the float to move properly in the flow.
This attention to detail meant that we got presentation on the canal better than the other anglers. The 'minipops' gave us a couple of important advantages. First, you hit bites that other anglers were missing, or not seeing, because the floats were balanced perfectly in the flow and with the bristle dotted right down, the bites were positive. The second big advantage was the presentation. With a 'minipop' you would often get a bite just after you gently pulled the float to inch it downstream. This was because the bait was trundling along the bottom rather than lifting and falling again and I'm convinced that this more than anything else is were the true strength of the 'mini's' lie.
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So having whetted your appetite for trying the floats I am now going detail exactly how Grip makes these little gems.
The materials you'll need:
To make a 'minipop' you'll need some thin balsa sheeting - 0.15mm is right - some thin piano wire and some float bristles (use thin nylon bristles from old or broken pole floats).
You'll also need a few basic tools:
Modeling knife/scalpel
Pliers
Sandpaper
Super glue
Varnish
Paintbrush.
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Stage 1
You need to mark out your balsa sheet with the relevant body template. Grip uses UK coins but I have included a rough Euro equivalent.
4 x No.10 float = One 5p coin or an old 5 centime piece.
4 x No. 8 float = One penny coin or a 10 cent coin
4 x No. 6 float = One pound coin or a 20 cent coin.
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Draw round the coin with a marker and carefully cut out the shape. You may find it difficult to cut across the balsa grain but try to be as firm as you can (a sharp blade will help!) but don't worry too much if the edges are a little rough.
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Stage 2
Once you have cut your required shapes use the coin template once again to carefully sand around the balsa to a perfect circle. You can also start to round the edges off on the balsa so that they are slightly chamfered to sit better in the flow.
DO NOT OVER ROUND YOUR EDGES AT THIS STAGE.
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Stage 3
Take a commercially made lollipop float and mark off approximately where the bristle is, in relation to the two wire inserts. This will ensure that your home made float is built to proportions similar to those professional models. Be careful how you line your balsa up before you mark it. You should always try to push wires and bristles into the balsa across the grain not along it as you will split the wood.
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As you look at the float have the grain running from right to left with the bristle and wires coming from above and below you.
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Stage 4
Holes can now be made ready for the bristle and wire. Use pliers and a small piece of wire which is just pushed into the balsa to make the holes, using a slightly thicker piece of wire to make the bristle hole, as the nylon bristle is thicker than the fine piano wire used for the stems.
If the float is going to go wrong then this is the stage it will happen. You need to take care when pushing the balsa onto the wire that you push it on straight and slowly.
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When we photographed Grip for this report his first effort broke at this point, "it happens" he said, and quickly cut another disc in the balsa!
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Stage 5
With the holes punched in the balsa you can now finish off sanding round the edges of the body to get the right profile to cut through the current. Use very fine glass paper and again don't worry if you haven't made an absolutely perfect job of the edging - your float isn't destined for the commercial market!
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You only get perfectly camfered edges on a machine and hand-made floats always look exactly what they are - hand-made!
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Stage 6
You can now glue in the bristle and wires. Starting with the bristle - a short piece of thin nylon - which inserts into the largest hole, this is about 25mm (1 inch) long. Next glue in the short section of wire at the top of the body, this only has to stick out by about 1 cm from the float. There is no line eye on a 'minipop' as silicone on all the wires allows the floats to be completely interchangeable. Use four sections of thin silicone, one for the short wire section and three for the stem.
Finally the long stabilising wire stem is glued in place. Grip varies the length of this stem, depending on the body size. The smallest sizes have an 8cm stem and the larger model has a 10.5cm stem.
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Stage 7
Give one coat of varnish and leave the floats to dry. You can then shot them up in a shotting tank and mark exactly what weight they take before applying a second thin coat of varnish.
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Your 'minipops' are now ready for use!
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Attaching the floats
I have already said that these floats have no eyes. We use four sections of thin silicone - one for the short wire section at the top and three for the stem below.
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Picking the right float
This is actually harder than you might think. Whereas most of us can read a river just about right - we get a feeling whether 5gr looks like enough or whether we need 8gr - this is much harder to do when dealing with tiny floats. I usually start with the lightest float and scale up as I feel my way through a fishing session and in most cases end up with the heavier float. I think this is partly because as bites become harder to find, during a match, you look for an even slower presentation to try to coax those extra few fish.
This is where the no eye system works so well. To increase float size you just slide off the rubbers and slide on a larger 'minipop'. Add the extra shot to the bulk and you're away again. One word of caution however... be careful as you slide floats in and out of the rubbers as the fine wire stems can easily bend.
Shotting
The shotting used with a 'minipop' is just a scaled down version of what you'd use on a larger 'lolly'. A small bulk and one dropper is about right for these tiny floats. For the smallest model (4 no. 10) use 3 no. 10 in a bulk and one no. 10, or 2 no. 13, as the droppers. To start with the dropper should be 15cm above the hook with the bulk 15cm above the dropper. This can be varied through the day. You do need to mark the depth off on your kit as I change depth and shotting at the same time when fishing the 'mini'.
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If I lift the bulk I add a little depth on. It doesn't take long to loose track of what the actual depth of the swim is. Only on the 6 no. 8 float would I try two droppers for variation along with the bulk moved up the line slightly. This then gives the hookbait more movement as it goes through the swim.
When you shot up the floats make sure that the bristle is sunk either just above, or just below, the surface so that when you hold back against the flow the tip of the bristle only just rides out. I have already said that bite indication is second to none with these floats.
This is only true if your bristle is just showing!
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Using your 'Minipop'
Mini's work exactly like their larger cousins. You work them through the swim in the same way. I have already spent some time describing the way you control lollipop floats. For slow flowing canals I usually start fishing along the far side of the boat track in the deepest part of the canal. As bites get harder during the day I move further across the canal, fishing up the shelf. This means that you'll have to carefully re-plumb your swim each time you add a section of pole on as you go further across. The other key to success with these floats is only feed through a pole cup. We never feed a lot on hard canals or rivers, especially in winter, and you need to be sure that your float is going over exactly the spot where your feed is. Only a pole cup gives you total feeding accuracy!
Conclusion
I hope this article shows you how anglers can take an existing idea, that works, and adapt it to match their own particular venues. I know in France they tend to look at lollipop floats purely for use on the large rivers but there are a lot of slow moving shallow canals and drains where I'm sure Grip's 'minipops' would be worth a spin. If a venue has a flow, not a tow, but a flow, no matter how slight, then a 'minipop' should give you more control and get you more bites than normal floats in winter, on condition that you get the float critically balanced. If you can think of a venue that you fish which meets these criteria then go on, give it a try. All you have to loose is a bit of balsa and a couple of old broken float bristles... simple really!!!
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