tackling tackle

I'd like to raise the topic of equipment, tackle, gear. At this point I'm only raising it, not trying to say anything very developed about it, and I don't want to move too far away from wisdom, which is - after all - the focusing concept in this exploration of fishing. (A history of tackle isn't what we need here.) But care of equipment, respect for it, the ability to handle it does have something to do with wisdom, I think, so to look at the angler's relationship with it seems important. This is interesting for me because I'm not one of those people who enjoys 'gear' very much and most of my interests can be pursued without much in the way of technical equipment. Until my knees started to protest, my great love was running, which doesn't really require anything other than a decent pair of shoes. But I do know people for whom the fascination of 'gear' is an important part of their interests - the kind of people who have a 'third-favourite piece of camping equipment' (true story) - and I sometimes wonder if I'm missing something by not getting more into that mind-set.

Just as a place-holder - a signal of the interest of this topic - I'm going to quote a couple of great little books that I bought for my Kindle: The Beginner's Guide to Coarse Fishing and Make Your Own Fishing Tackle, both by Paul Duffield. In the first one, the author says:

Years ago, before modern manufacturing methods allowed specialist items of tackle to be made inexpensively for very specific uses, fishing tackle was made to cover a wide range of fishing situations and only a short section of this guide would have been needed to cover most of the fishing tackle you could buy. The challenge today is to recommend a starter kit that will cover most angling situations without suggesting that you buy ten rods, five reels and a wide assortment of other equipment that it would be impossible to carry to the bank.

I don't want to talk about this at length this morning but in The Practice of Everyday Life, Luce Giard discusses how changes in the availability of  equipment have affected the gesture sequences that make up the complex textile of 'doing cooking'. It won't be useful to draw too close a parallel between what she says about the kitchen and these changes on the river bank (not least because she regards the availability of electric equipment as effectively 'deskilling' cooks, which is not, I think, what has happened in fishing, although, as usual, it would be interesting to see how the experienced anglers see it). The main point is really that the interaction between embodied knowledge and the types of equipment available, which is in turn an economic issue, ('tackle ... made inexpensively for very specific purposes') seems to me one that we should bear in mind.

In his second book, Duffield offers many ideas for making your own fishing tackle. The reason he gives for doing this is largely aesthetic. (I tend to harp on about the aesthetic judgements people make in everyday life and am gratified to find them in play here too!)

While modern fishing tackle is perfectly usable and efficient for its intended purpose, to many, modern plastics and other man made materials are less pleasing to the eye and seem out of place in a natural environment such as a river or tree lined lake.

However, there are a couple of very appreciative reviews of the book on Amazon and one of them introduces a more economic dimension into the discussion. It begins like this:

Books concerning DIY for fishing used to be all the rage about 40 to 50 years ago. Nowadays it is expected that the average angler will simply buy everything he/she wants (or what the tackle makers want them to think they want) off the tackle dealers' shelves. But what if that angler wants to turn back time and fish the way that his or her grandparents did?

Here DIY becomes a chance to break away from what manufacturers want you to think you need, a critical response to the way more or less everything has turned into a marketable commodity. I won't say any more about that now but, once again, I reckon there's lots there to think about.

The reviewer's comment about the vogue for DIY books rang bells with me. When I was a boy I used to leaf through a range of books that my father had collected and that were packed with instructions about making all kinds of things in your shed - not so much fishing tackle as toys and things like that. The illustration here is from a 1958 edition of The Practical Householder that Steve lent me. The idea that you might make your own spin drier as an enjoyable DIY project seems amazing to me but - from the instructions - it seems that it's perfectly feasible.