After stepping away from fishing in my early teens and not returning for 20 years or so, I completely missed the massive boom in pole fishing. The closest I got to experiencing fishing with a pole was back when I spent some of my holiday money on a small whip at the age of around 13 or 14.

As a youngster, my dad hated pole fishing, so I never had the chance to give it a go. He’d often say that using a pole “isn’t even real fishing”. Unfortunately, he’s no longer around to ask why. Part of me feels it was probably because he was getting smashed up in matches by people using poles, whereas he preferred the more old-school methods of waggler and feeder fishing.

When I got back into fishing, I bought a small 8.5m Preston Innovations Edge Monster margin pole and some pre-tied rigs. On my first trip out, Brian set me up and showed me what to do, and I had an amazing experience catching tiny perch all day.

After experiencing pole fishing properly for the first time, I was eager to learn more. I would religiously watch guides on YouTube every night and soon realised that my small selection of rigs didn’t cover everything I wanted to do.

As someone who naturally overthinks things rather than jumping straight in, the thought of tying pole rigs seemed daunting. I spent hours watching videos from famous anglers trying to find out which float and which shot pattern to use in different situations. In the end, I was more confused than when I decided to start looking for info.

One of the biggest issues I discovered was that different sponsored anglers would refer to similar floats by different names depending on the brand. Then there were the different bristle sizes, stem choices, types of shots, and lash lengths to think about. For anyone who has tied their own rigs in the past, the above probably sounds a bit extreme, but as I mentioned earlier, I do have a habit of overthinking everything.

Thankfully, that’s when I discovered a Lee Kerry video on YouTube. In the video, he explained how he chooses the correct float for different situations and only carries a small selection of floats in his box. This was almost the complete opposite of other videos I had seen where anglers seemed to have dozens of float patterns in every possible size and on multiple lines. If you’re interested, you can watch the video below:

Lee being a Preston Innovations sponsored angler led me to look at more videos on their channel. I quickly came across a video announcing the launch of the Des Shipp range of commercial pole floats.

What immediately struck me about the range was that the name tells you exactly what they should be used for. F1 Shallow, Carp Pellet, Edge, F1 Maggot, and so on. As the Ronseal advert once said, they do “exactly what it says on the tin”. Discovering this range instantly took away all of the complications.

Most of my pole fishing is done at commercial-style venues around three to five feet deep. After a bit of playing around with different floats, I’ve been able to reduce my float selection down to a handful of options. I do think that I could narrow the number of floats down even further if I wanted to. The main reason I haven’t is because I can’t resist the stand full of floats near the till in my local tackle shop.

I use the Edge float up against islands or unsurprisingly down the edge. The F1 Maggot for silver fishing on the deck with small baits such as maggots or small pieces of corn. The F1 or Carp Pellet floats for larger baits on the deck depending on the size of fish in the water. The F1 or Carp Shallow for, you guessed it, shallow fishing depending on the size of fish I’m targetting. Lastly, the Dibber for mugging and slapping.

If you don’t fancy tying the rigs yourself, the Des Shipp range is also available as pre-tied rigs. I found that useful when it came to shotting the rigs I was tying as I could quickly search for the pre-tied versions and see what shot, line and hook size each rig was supplied with.

The Des Shipp range from Preston isn’t the only brand that has simplified things. I’ve recently seen NuFish and Matrix pole floats with easy-to-understand names, but for the time being, I’m happy with the ones I’ve been using.