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Swingtip?

Declan Doherty

Declan Doherty

Senior Member
I've got an old Daiwa MK2 'Matchman Leger Rod' fitted with a swingtip, which hasn't seen a reel for the best part of 25yrs (or more).. For a bit of fun, I thought I'd give it an airing Perch fishing on a small pit later in the week.

Having never used a swingtip before (the rod belonged to the late friend of a friend) I've a couple of questions..

Do you position the rod with the tip down close to the water?

Do you 'point' the rod at the bait or fish it 'sideways on' (or does it matter)..?

Am I likely to hook a 3lb'er and have this old piece of junk explode on me? :)


Declan
 
This certainly had me thinking as i have never swingtipped since being a teenager.
Anyway method wise, yes fish the swingtip close to the water, if it is calm. If there is a bit of chop on the water just above, if really windy you can sometimes get away with it slightly under the water. You could also add some lead wire to aid it bouncing in the swell and this will also work if there is a strong undertow. Ideally you should have the rod about 45 degrees. Its a great method and in some situations better than a quivertip. Just beware when casting as it can sometimes be prone to tangling, i used a overhead chuck, but found i got more tangles side casting.
I have one of these rods too
Enjoy a great method

Jon
 
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In the 80s I fished Theale Lagoon for tench using a swingtip and groundbait feeder. I used a John Wilson Avon Quiver, with the screw tip avon top.

Happy days.

The swingtip is a much maligned and sadly overlooked method. On its day it presents a great alternative to the more fashionable quivertip.

I can remember getting fantastic bites from those Theale tench. And when the swingtip just keeps on going up, up, up - well the bites are practically unmissable.

I must give it a go. I still have a few swing tips in a float tube in the garage, and my old Wilson rods are still useable. Let the revival begin...
 
When I lived in Ireland.....................:) joke to mr lush;)

The main adventage I learned and advantage with it once you learned how to cast it was that your bite indication was not like a quiver tip where tension increases quickly and would result in more dropped bites but set up correctly on a swing tip you could encourage the bite to develop because the first few inches of movement on indiacation did not increase on the tension to the fishes mouth too much.

Set your rod up 10 to 20 degree in line with the tow(downstream)....I know it's a lake!...it's a matter of relieving sudden tension and should be fished slack line while keeping the tip in touch with your hook bait

Not a bolt rigging sorta rig but a back leading type of thing where the line is laid on the bottom with you hitting a bite and not waiting for a fish to hook itself.......bream and tench are suckers for it.

Cheers
Jason
 
fish the rod at a bit of a right angle, dip the tip under the water if windy, cast in a overhead positon, keep it straight and smooth to prevent tangles, i loved my swingtip bream fishing in the 80's.
 
your love it, it was only because alarms got so cheap that the swingtip went out of fashion.
 
Great method for eel fishing as well, it's the lack of resistance which makes it work so well. You can also set them to be perfectly balanced against a light lead so the slightest touch shows up as a drop back.

Don't think of it as a long range method as over 25/30 yards the stretch in the line and the undertow will ruin a delicate presentation. a target board can also be used for extra fine presentations.

I use on of those sidewinder things modified and mounted as an indicator under my delkims when I'm fishing for dropbacks on the Dove, by using different screw in quivers and lead combinations you can get a solid but delicate presentation with quite heavy leads. Any movement of the bait results in the quiver producing a positive indication on the alarm which is unmissable. It's basicaly a poor mans Solar quiverloc.
 
"Don't think of it as a long range method as over 25/30 yards the stretch in the line and the undertow will ruin a delicate presentation"

No problems there - 25yds would have me fishing the field behind the lake! It'll be practically under the rod tip...
 
Those were the days with the Old Persuader, swing tipping on the fen drains, Relief Channel, and Welland. Bream from Ten Mile Bank, Red Hart Lane, Crooked Chimney, Crowland and the Coronation Channel.
The swing tip itself was said to be designed by Yorkshire angler Freddie Foster who used it to good effect on the Fen Drains. Sheffield had about all of the Middle Level then.
The Persuader rod (there was also a float version) was designed by Ivan Marks when the Likely Lads were king pins.

I could go on and on.

Paul
 
Crikey Paul, still got a Persuader in the loft. Lovely rod in it's day. Had a spare tip cut back and a 3oz solid glass quiver spiced in for a flooded Warks Avon then realised it made an excellent Barbel rod :).

Cheers
Paul
 
Paul,
It's funny I did the same thing. Still used in the late 80's to catch chub from the White House Bend at Shardlow. Used in a match when I took 36lb of small chub on maggot feeder and only came 12th. 250 fished then they are lucky to get 20 now.

Mike
It's probably a method that was claimed to be invented by more than one angler. I remember Russell Foster, nephew of Freddie winning the Welland Championship on the swing tip. He was described in the Angling Press as the nephew of the man who invented the swingtip. I wouldn't argue my case with conviction though.

Paul
 
Paul

I did say 'as we know it'.
The first mention that Fred Buller found was descibed in The Anglers Pocket Book 1805. It was called 'The Elastic or New Invented Superficial Float' and worked on the same principle as that 'invented' by the Boston tackle dealer Jack Clayton.
 
Isn't it lovely - re-discovering the far-distant past...?

Somewhere in the Boote Archive I have the following:

Twelve inches of hand-shaved and - sanded balsa dowel with a couple of chromed intermediate rings and tip ring (ex-Wey Valley, wool, model and tackle-shop, circa 1967), with two or three inches of flexible, clear plastic tubing (bought from a pharmaceuticals firm near Godalming I had visited unannounced one afternoon - make that 'given to me to make me, a mad, possibly posh, kid go away') shoved onto its thicker end, to fit onto the shaped tip-end of a Martin James 10-foot all-rounder cane rod of the era that wasn't fit for anything except removal of its tip-ring and turning into a swing-tip rod for the then still-interesting and worth-fishing Broadwater Lake...
 
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