REVIEW
HANDMADE BLACKFISH FLOATS
WHEN I started luderick (blackfish) fishing back in the 1960s there weren’t a lot of quality floats available commercially so most of us made our own. We used cane stems, or sometimes porcupine or bird quills, fitted them with wine corks or balsa we shaped with sandpaper, then finished them with paint or lacquer and fluoro paint up top. My old dad was still making floats into his 80s, and I’m lucky enough to have two fishing mates, Alastair and Mike, still sending some of their classy products my way.
Some tackle stores, even back then, were lucky enough to have local floatmakers supplying them with floats for sale. These guys were generally older, made their floats primarily for their own
