Evolution of indication by alan blair

NASH KNOWHOW

The Evolution Of Indication

THE

EVOLUTION OF INDICATION

By Alan Blair

Do you have one set of bobbins that you use everywhere? Lines always slack? Alan Blair outlines why there’s so much more to effective indication, and why it’s so important to help you catch more.

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NASH KNOWHOW I’m going to hold my hands up here and say that until recent years a screaming take was the limit of my involvement with indication when carp fishing. I’d been sucked into a world where a bite alarm just told me when a carp was attached to the end!

If I go back further in my angling though, to the days when I focussed on shotting patterns on a float, reading a quiver tip, touch ledgering and lure fishing when slight dips, taps, knocks and pulls were what you actually converted into actual takes I’m at a complete loss as to why when I got so involved in carp fishing that I forgot those basic lessons. If you were float fishing you wouldn’t only strike when the float was all the way under, or when feeder fishing only strike when the tip slammed round and the rod got dragged off the rest.

It wasn’t until I began working with Kevin and more importantly spending a great deal of time fishing with him that I soon began to realise how important indication really was. This realisation came from Kev’s project developing the Sirens. He understood that because alarms constantly sounded when the wind blew or undertow picked up or a bit of weed sat on the line that alarms weren’t actually giving us the vital feedback we needed to help catch carp – what they were saying had lost its significance. How many of you have had interrupted sleep right through the night as a result of a piece of floating weed catching on your line or constantly hear alarms sounding in a big wind when the bobbins jump? We had all learned to ignore anything apart from screamers.

The Evolution Of Indication

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So What Makes R3s Different?

After more than two years development working with some seriously skilled electronics experts we concluded that instead of measuring how much line is moved, we needed to measure the speed at which it moved to enable us to eradicate a huge percentage of the meaningless indications. I have been fishing with the R3 alarms for almost 5 years now – since the very first prototypes and they are the BEST bite alarm I have ever used!

I know this unique Speed Sensing system has helped me catch extra fish.

The easiest way of me relating how they

The Old And The New

work in ‘real life’ terms is to liken an R3 to a Speed Camera. When you are driving along a road and the speed limit is 30 mph, if you pass the speed camera at 30 then it doesn’t indicate and flash however if you pass the camera doing 40 mph it flashes and you are getting a ticket.

If the line passes across the roller wheel of an R3 very slowly from a breeze picking up for example the alarm isn’t triggered. But if a carp tightens to your lead the change in the line speed means you are notified and get a bleep or several bleeps.

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1. I have learned to trust and pay attention a lot more to my alarms since we developed the R3, they are my eyes underwater.

There are two speed sensing settings on an R3 that get the most use. One setting is for when it’s windy, or I’m faced with slow current flow in a river or tow on a canal and I want to knock out and eradicate as many of the false beeps I can. The final setting is for when its PROPERLY windy – I’m sitting in the teeth of it on a big pit somewhere and the waves are literally lapping up against my lines entering the water causing the bobbin to rise and fall faster than normal – again – by implementing this setting in this situation, almost all of your false beeps can be eradicated.

Just the advancement in indication technology would be enough for me to be a convert to R3s. Add the compactness of them, the built in snag ears, exceptional battery life, the integrated bobbin thread, how ridiculously waterproof they are, the brightness of the LEDS, the ease of use/ programming and amazing receiver performance for difficult swims like dug outs and urban environments and they are everything I want and need.

So is there any need for what was a traditional indication system? Actually there is. The R3 does have a third sensitivity setting like a conventional alarm, and this particular setup is very sensitive so if it was a windy day for example you would be getting an awful lot of false indications you don’t need to hear about! Where I will use this setting when I am tight line fishing – zig fishing for example where because there is no ‘slack’ and I’m not getting false beeps anyway. Also zig bites can sometimes be very subtle so I need to know about the tiniest of movements.

The lesson is the same, indication has to be tailored to the situation, like line tension, and also bobbin weight. One indication style or system is not the answer everywhere.

2. Indication is not the same for everywhere you fish, even rod to rod needs to be different.

3. Zig capture from a slow tightening of the line, the one occasion I change my R3s to traditional roller wheel indication.

4. Using tension in the line to our advantage the innovative Nash Wasp indicator is hugely effective on big venues.

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NASH KNOWHOW

The Evolution Of Indication

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‘Almost Catching’ Indications

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Some of you will be thinking surely the carp picks up the rig, gets pricked, lead comes into play and it’s nailed! I wish it was as simple as that – but it just isn’t.

If you have ever watched any of the amazing Korda underwater DVDs it might help to explain this scenario better. The lads who made those films between them have decades of experience yet still, time after time they highlighted how a carp can come in take a rig and eject it and in some cases, significantly move the rig and lead yet still there’s no definite run.

It comes down to whether you want to wait for a screamer or want to get the most out of your fishing and generally not get mugged off by the carp all the time without knowing about it. If it’s the latter, a Speed Sensing alarm WILL catch you more fish – FACT.

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Unless you are Korda and have a diving team and underwater cameras

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next to your rig how do you really know what’s going on in your swim? When you get a series of bleeps, bobbin pulls up and drops back down are you always going to just say ‘liner’ or write it off as wind or could you utilise a system like this in your angling to knock out as many unnecessary beeps as possible so when your alarm does beep you are on it and genuinely notified something is going on down there that you need to know about and respond to.

I seriously love these alarms and although I’m very proud of all the tackle we as a company produce can I really sit here and proclaim that our carryall is amazing because… our swivels are amazing because…our hoodies are amazing because ...not really.

But R3 Alarms I hope you see are genuinely different, and I believe they have massively benefited my angling and could, if used correctly do the same for you.

My Take on Indication Here’s a few of the steps I take that improve my understanding of what is happening when I’m fishing.

A lot of set ups I see whilst out on the bank have these really cool featherweight bobbins on the floor, which are no help at all registering drop back or forward movement towards the rods. Like it or not at certain ranges you need a significant weight in a bobbin or indicator to register a drop back, and with roller wheel alarms you also need bobbins of a reasonable weight to tension the line and prevent it sliding across the wheel.

If you tight line it’s easy to eradicate a lot of false beeps but what if, due to the circumstances you want to fish semi slack line or completely slack to conceal your mainline – in these situations tuning the weight of your bobbin and putting the relevant tension on the line that will in turn give you better indication and also aid with eradicating wind inference and undertow for example .

5. Conditions where indication is normally compromised - but not now thanks to speed sensing.

6. Big pits can present problems with a lot of false indications.

7. Heavy Slaphead short arms.

8. Tidal water - no problem for an R3.

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I used to think so many different bobbin sizes and add on weights being available was over the top but now I am absolutely converted to the importance of tuning indication and varying not just the weight of the bobbin but the tension in the line. If you are one of those Carpers with one set of bobbins you use everywhere, your indication could really be improved. One easy solution is a variable weight swing arm style like our Slaphead Strong Arms Loaded so you can just slide the drag weight to change your indication and the tension on the line to suit the swim, range, and conditions.

The other benefit of using an arm type indicator/bobbin as opposed to one on a cord for example is that you also won’t get any interference from a bobbin being blown side to side in windy conditions.

There’s a lot of theories offered to do with indication. One winter when Kev and I went to GREAT lengths to try and replicate slack, semi slack and tight lines and how much a rig can be moved in multiple directions and what indication we received on our alarms and bobbins. The results were incredible and made me sit up and take note but this was all on the bank stuff so for accuracy the next port of call was to get into the lake and replicate the same tests underwater.

Nash consultant and qualified diver Paul Garner and I set rigs out on a plateau at about 40 yards and went through all the permutations, slack line, semi slack, super tight, different bobbin weights and looked at what was really going on rather than the accepted wisdom we all hear people repeating.

Be under no illusions slack lines give terrible indication. Even at that short range we could lift a rig and move it three feet or more in any direction and a true slack line gave no indication at all. Do you really want to allow that much movement of your rig and not know? Me, I’d 100% want to know as soon as it was picked up so I’m confident I’m on fish and the indication is telling me I’m close but need a rig or bait tweak for a hook up as opposed to a half chance.

With a tight line in the same situation I found the moment you picked the lead up off the lakebed you got an indication.

Tight lining was the best for indication, semi-slack in the middle and slack lining the worst. The problem is that lines obviously also spook fish, so I try and balance line concealment with indication. If carp are spooky and the water is clear then slack lining is the way most people approach it, but I would much prefer to use back leads and have a tighter line so there’s a drop on the bobbin to register drop backs and have a better contact with the rig. For commercials, estate lakes and those sorts of venues where the topography is quite predictable I’ll pick back leads over a slack line every time.

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NASH KNOWHOW

The Evolution Of Indication

Getting To The Bottom Of It will be in order which could be a longer or shorter rig, heavier or lighter lead, entirely new presentation. I might not have a camera in the swim but the Blow Out Tube on the shank is at least giving me some feedback as to what is going on out there.

A point that also needs to be noted is that even with a tight line there’s still a significant length of it along the bottom around the rig, especially at any distance and in shallow water of say 1 – 2 meters. I’ve been out in a boat and looked at a rig with a slack line, gone back to the rod and wound it bowstring tight had a second look and it looked no different.

The difference would have been only in much better indication from the tight line when a carp picked it up. There is a time and a place for Slack, Semi Slack, and Tight along with appropriate indication via your bobbins – assess the situation – then make a call. Taken to its extreme, we sell thousands of the re-launched WASP indicator that allow you to dial in the tension you want. They are amazing on the big continental venues, and by increasing tension you can balance the tension from the indicator to the weight of the lead and that really catches difficult fish out. There’s a time for everything from zero tension to lead balancing tension.

LIFE CHANGING Keep your finger on the pulse - Next Generation Bite Indication

Carp fishing can be as simple or as complex as you wish to make it – for sure chucking out any old rig, anywhere in the lake, paying little attention to your indication will still catch you fish - I know this because it’s how I fished for many years and I still caught a good few fish along the way). If you want to go out there on every session and make the most of your time and reap the rewards then the R3s, correct bobbin choice and setup, appropriate tension to your rig and in many cases the use of a little piece of Blow Out Tube have taken my carp angling go back to the days when I put so much thought into float, feeder, touch ledgering and lure fishing where I scrutinised everything to catch the most and biggest fish I could....... your choice!

The final piece of the jigsaw, for me, is a way of telling if I’m being picked up even if my indication has been compromised.

Going back to float fishing and hitting bites – the big giveaway is whether the maggot is sucked or damaged. My ‘sucked maggot’ for my carp fishing is a simple length of blow out tube. If I get beeps but no hooked carp I can reel in a Blow Out Tube Rig and assess the positioning of the tube. If it hasn’t moved from where I had set it then I would believe any indications were genuinely liners. If the tube has been moved slightly along the shank then odds on it’s a bream, tench or roach. If however the tube has been blown all the way back to the eye then I’m extremely confident that I’ve been done over by a carp! Just like my sucked maggot, I didn’t catch the fish but it has given me vital information that I can then act on. It could be bad luck but if it keeps happening then a rig tweak

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9. Kev, myself and Paul Garner have spent a long time looking at what really happens underwater with line tension and indication.

10. The tube on the hook of a blow out rig wedged back up the shank or pushed back to the eye is the carp equivalent of a sucked maggot.

THE SIREN R3’S line speed sensing system eliminates false indications from wind, weed and even flowing water. Yet the moment a hooklength is tightened, a lead is moved or the bobbin lifts from a line bite the R3 tells you what you need to hear. It’s next generation indication.

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