The Beauty of Balanced Tackle

I’m very lucky and privileged to fish the places that I do, and with some of the best anglers in the country.

I adore my silvers fishing, however where I often fish, there’s always the chance of a large chub or barbel that can come along and take your bait.

If you’re not geared up properly, then you can get into some enormous problems and lose many, if not all of these bonus fish. When I say properly, I mean balanced, and that is something that has been emphasised to me over and over again by these top anglers. So, what does balanced tackle actually mean?

Balanced tackle is simply that you should be fishing a mainline that is close to or as near to your hook length diameter as you can get. This allows you to get the full use of both in terms of stretch and versatility.

A recent session proves this when I was fishing for silvers using Edge Tackle Floating Mono in 0.16 mm (4lb breaking strain) coupled with the Edge Premium Mono in 0.12 mm (3.5lb breaking strain) for an 18-inch hook length.

I was targeting silvers and catching a few nice fish, when suddenly my stick float dipped and something much larger took my tare hook bait.

Straight away I knew it was a barbel and my Cadence 15ft Match #0 had a decent bend in it, but because I had confidence in the tackle I was using, there was no need to panic.

The length of my hook length, with the balanced mainline and the rod, meant I could play the fish competently. Without too many problems, a lovely 8lbs 2oz barbel was safely in the net.

There’s no doubt that this balancing of the lines, along with the rod, enabled me to land this fish effortlessly.

After landing this fish, and continuing to feed my swim whilst I was playing it, I then topped up the peg with a couple of small bait dropper fills of mainly hemp with a few tares and casters as well.

It’s critical to keep the fish in your vicinity, and they are more than hungry enough to devour whatever you’re feeding them.

I went on to catch silvers until a nice chub approaching 4lbs came along also, making this a lovely session to have.

This result is typical of many of the sessions I experience and is the sort of mixed bag I thoroughly enjoy.

Of course, I always have a beefed up rod and line set up ready in case the barbel and chub take over the swim. Again that will be with a balanced mainline hook length accordingly, and this rod can double up as your bait dropper rod too.

I’ve used the Edge Tackle Line and products for nearly two years now, and I can honestly say that they are excellent, well-made, accurate and that they’ve never ever let me down; either fishing ultra light to catching large specimen barbel in any conditions.