Carp & night
Night fishing on the bank, where you buy hearing instead of seeing
Every piece of equipment on this site that depends on you watching it stops working at nightfall. Night fishing is therefore a different purchase list, and the thing that separates a good item from a bad one is whether it tells you something without being looked at.
By Jean-Benoit Buisson
After dark, nothing works by eye. That is the whole of this list.
1. The alarm, chosen on its range
A receiver and two alarms, stated at over 150 metres — the only range published on that shelf, and the figure the whole category exists for.
The receiver vibrates as well as sounding, which is what makes it work in a pocket. The rod rest is a deep U, which is what stops a rod being pulled off the pod on a fast take. And the controls are described exactly: on/off, volume, a short press for tone, three seconds for sensitivity.
What it does not give you: a sensitivity step count, where two alarms on that shelf state eight. And it needs seven AAA cells, none included.
2. The pod
Aluminium, 1943 g, with three alarms and three V rests in the box — and every dimension published: 77 × 44 × 36 cm standard, 110 × 44 × 61 cm at maximum, a 77 × 21 × 7 cm bag, buzzer bars 44 cm wide and 27 cm high adjustable over 18 cm, a centre bar from 77 to 110 cm, and telescopic legs from 24 to 43 cm, each adjusted on its own.
That last detail is the one that matters after dark: legs adjusted individually is how a pod stands level on ground you cannot see. Set it in daylight anyway — a pod levelled in the dark is a pod that tips at three in the morning.
It is also the most completely measured item on its shelf and the lightest, which is the pair of facts that makes a long walk in worth doing.
3. The sonar, used before dark
A 2,4-inch colour LCD handset, depth to 45 m, wireless to 150 m, reading bottom contour, depth, water temperature and fish size with depth.
Cast the sensor across the swim in the afternoon and read the bottom: the bar, the drop-off, the silt. At night you then cast to something you have seen.
Two features here are specifically for the dark. The sensor carries a fish-attracting lamp in a transparent cover, with a spare cover, so you can see where it is. And there is a simulation mode that runs every function dry — which means you can learn the menu on the sofa instead of on the bank with a torch in your teeth.
Battery: handset 4 hours, sensor 10.
4. The mat
130 × 30 cm in hard-wearing Oxford polyester, with soft knee padding and a non-slip edge guard, rollable with retaining loops and carabiners for a rucksack or a chair.
The edge guard is the night feature: a fish on a flat mat slides sideways off it, and at two in the morning with one hand on a torch you will not catch it. The knee pad is for you, and it is the only thing on that shelf that is.
Three things not sold here
A red-mode head torch — white light kills your night vision for twenty minutes and lights up the swim.
Batteries, for the alarms and the receiver both. Seven of them, for the set above.
And a way of finding your own rigs, bait and tools without the torch. Lay them out before dark in the order you will want them.
