THE ONION WAGGLER
Know your onions was an old saying in the Midlands; it did not mean the ones you eat but the ones you fished with.
The onion float was developed long before most body waggler types. Used as a wind-beater on venues like the Nene and Welland, and all other slow-moving waters.
That great old angler Billy Lane used to swear by this float, as far as to say he used them with great effect, and according to the great man himself, it was the best float ever for lift bites, due to its construction of crow quill and cork.
The first ever onions were constructed with a rounded cork body and a reverse crow quill stem. Developed later with balsa bodies and peacock stems. These days they are constructed with polystyrene bodies and peacock stems. The name they call this now is a polywag. With the amount of waggler-type floats on the market, we often wonder which one to use and when. Considering this question, suffice to say that we should carry all of them and with experiences, each float will present a bait to a fish differently.
The onion float can in some circumstance’s outfish big-bodied waggles, simply because the body on the onion is much smaller and is ideal for choppy wind conditions, on still and slow-moving waters.
Canal’s, slow and still waters, are ideal for this float, especially with a down stream and choppy conditions, and with an extra loaded base the float can be very stable, the float acts like this ”now you see it, now you don’t another words the antenna will stay in a fixed stable condition and the lap of the water will ride over the top.
Timing this rhythm of the lap, so that when the antenna part of the float fails to show then a bite is imminent.
Onion waggler floats are sometimes used instead of the dart-float, it has extra weight and buoyancy, with that sensitivity and with a loaded inserted base it is also very accurate when casting I have used this float to good affect on water’s up to 8ft deep, any deeper and it seems to loose its effectiveness of riding the waves, using a quick float adapter I can convert any waggler to the onion float.
Winning a match on my local lake was the proof of the pudding, when most other anglers struggled in the choppy conditions; I could see the bites and caught plenty of fish.
Now Available: The Float Manual with 167 content pages
