THE MISSILE WAGGLER
The missile waggler was developed for long range distance fishing. The pioneer of this method was probably the late billy lane, he and his Coventry National angling squad, of the late fifty’s and early sixty’s used these huge floats to great affect on wide river’s with winning national honours.
Since the early day developments of these floats, they have now come to be recognized as potential match winners, on otherwise feeder or legering method waters, and the latest developments have come to the stage of scientific aerodynamics. With these floats, anglers can now cast at amazing distances, reaching fish that perhaps were only possibly with a lead weight. The advantages with the missile waggler float is that we can create much better bait presentations, than using a straight bomb or feeder.
One venue that comes to mind is Arrow valley lake near Redditch, west midlands, casting to the island with a distance of over 70 yards is the only way to catch those carp which feed on the surface. Using special made loade missile floats and with no shot on the line, catches often exceed 100lbs of carp ranging from 21lb to 10lb.
Another venue that was suited to the missile was the river Erne in N Ireland, fishing at long range distance saw me come second with 42lb of hybrids and bream in a large sponsored match.
On my international fishing journeys abroad, the missile waggler is often used, and in contry’s such as Italy, france, Austria, Russia, Germany just to mentiona few, it is there we have learnt how these aerodynamic floats have been developed to there greatest potential.
The float is aerodynamically shaped to cut down on any wind drag, with a built in loaded base to assist the flight and keep it in a staight line, when casting just like an arrow. A flight, is moulded into the antenna part of the float and some missile wagglers have been reported to cast well over 100meters.
The length of a missile waggler float can be as long as 2ft but the averag missile, can be 18” and with a weight capacity of 18 grams. This means that you will need a good strong reel line of about 3 1b, and a shock leader to absorb the initial thust of the rod of about 5 1b.
To be able to see this float at a long range, the antenna has to be long and visible, some floats have cane antenna’s and other’s to make them highly visible have a hollow plastic tube, similar to a plastic drinking straw . The coloured tip, has to be a multicolour type ie…blaze top, black middle, white band, this allows sight of the tip taking into account changing light and back grounds.
The mini missile floats, are similar to the giant version I have mentioned so far, the exception being that they may not have the flight moulded on to the antenna. But large enough to cope with a fare lengthy cast.
Now Available The Float Manual with 167 of page content
