I did an honest audit of my tackle bag recently, partly out of curiosity and partly because carrying it to the swim was starting to feel genuinely heavy. The result was a bit humbling: a large proportion of what I carry every session gets used rarely, if at all.
What I actually use, session after session: a modest range of hook sizes I’ve settled on over years (I could probably halve my hook wallet without noticing), one main line spool plus a backup, a small handful of float patterns that cover 90% of situations, and bread, corn, and maggots as bait more often than anything more specialist. That’s genuinely most of what produces fish for me on a typical session.
What sits unused most of the time: several specialist rigs I bought after reading about them once, a second rod I rarely deploy, and enough spare terminal tackle variety to cover eventualities that essentially never arise in my actual fishing. None of it is wasted money exactly – some of it earns its place on the specific days it’s needed – but the gap between “tackle I own” and “tackle I use on a typical session” is bigger than I’d have guessed before actually counting.
The practical lesson: if you’re a newer angler looking at tackle shop shelves and feeling like you need to own one of everything, you probably don’t. A modest, well-chosen core kit covers the overwhelming majority of UK coarse fishing situations, and the specialist extras can wait until a specific need for them actually comes up.
Dan Whitfield started fishing aged seven on the canal at the end of his road and never really stopped. He spent his twenties and thirties on the match circuit – club level rather than national – before deciding he’d rather catch one decent fish than a net of small ones.
These days he mostly fishes the River Trent for barbel (personal best 14lb 2oz), the Oxford Canal for roach and skimmers in winter, and the occasional gravel pit when tench are spawning and the surface fishing is too good to miss. He’s a former club secretary and still helps with junior coaching at his local angling club in Nottingham.
At The River Bend, Dan writes the coarse species guides, river fishing technique articles, and the match and pole content.
Covers: Barbel, bream, roach, tench, carp (coarse context), river fishing, canal fishing, feeder, float, match/pole