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Fishing for bream on the classic donk, which came to us from the Soviet era, is very popular and not too expensive. Such fishing is suitable for going to barbecues, as an auxiliary activity, and for a full-fledged fishing activity. In addition, the donka allows the use of modern types of gear.
Donka classic: what is it?
Bottom fishing rod is one of the most famous and ancient ways of catching fish. In its original version, it is simply a baited fishing hook, tied along with a fairly heavy sinker on a fishing line, which is thrown into the water to catch fish. In modern fishing, such tackle is also used and is known as a “snack”.
When they talk about a bottom fishing rod in the modern sense, they usually mean something else. This is a tackle with a rod and a reel, which performs the same role as a bait – to deliver the load and bait to the bottom and pull the fish out. Doing this with their help is much more convenient than throwing and pulling it out with your hands. The rate of fishing increases several times, as a result, with an active bite, you can catch more fish. Yes, and such tackle is less confused. There are many other advantages to using a rod and reel. This is the ability to use thin fishing lines, and less weight of the sinker, and effective hooking with a rod, and a number of others.
A bottom rod for catching bream is more effective than many other gear. When fishing from the shore, none of the methods can compete with it, except that fishing from a boat provides several advantages to alternative types of fishing. Of course, each body of water has its own characteristics, and somewhere the bream can bite better on the float.
Catching on the English feeder
The feeder, in fact, is a more advanced type of donkey, when the industry went to meet anglers and produced a lot of specialized gear. As a result, a new type of fishing has developed from the usual donkey in England. In the USSR, consumer production was not so willing to meet people, and as a result, the donka was preserved in the form in which it was originally abroad. Many are still catching on such tackle, and I must say, very, very successfully. Donka is a spinning rod adapted for bottom fishing, which was produced by enterprises and was more suitable for such fishing than for spinning.
What is a classic bottom fishing rod? Usually this is a fiberglass rod, from 1.3 to 2 meters long. It has a fairly large test and is designed to cast heavy bait, usually up to 100 grams in weight. This rod is equipped with an inertial reel with a drum diameter of 10 to 15 cm. An inertial reel requires experience in handling, in particular, the ability to slow it down with your finger at the right moment so that there are no beards. A fishing line with a diameter of 0.2 to 0.5 mm is wound on the reel, 0.3-0.4 is usually used.
The line is monofilament, as it is problematic to cast with inertia and a line. At the slightest underexposure, the loops come off, and in this case the line has the peculiarity of clinging to the reel handles, rod rings, sleeve buttons, which makes fishing with it and inertia impossible. You have to twist the brake on the coil, which drastically reduces the casting distance. Therefore, for those who want to use the line on the donk, a direct route to the use of feeder gear with modern inertial reels.
At the end of the fishing line, a weight and a pair of leashes with hooks are attached. Usually the load is placed at the end of the main line, and the leashes are attached above it. It is usually impossible to fix more than two hooks, since in this case you either have to sacrifice the length of the leash, or increase the overhang of the fishing line when casting, which is not always convenient. On bottom rods for bream fishing, wire rigs are often used, which allow you to increase the number of hooks used to four – two on the mount, two higher on the main line.
Generally speaking, increasing the number of hooks per line is a common way for bottom anglers to try to catch bream. The probability of biting on several hooks is always greater than on one, albeit disproportionately. However, with a large number of hooks, you have to put up with the fact that they will be confused. Here it is worth choosing the golden mean and there is no need to chase quantity too much. Usually two hooks are more than enough.
The feeder is not used very often when fishing on the donk. The fact is that the evolution of feeders has led to the appearance of a classic feeder feeder with a loaded bottom, to flat feeders. And for a donkey, the classic is catching bream on a spring, a feeder that does not hold food very well and gives a lot of it when it falls. It gets to the bream in a small amount, but most of it is sprayed in the water column and attracts flocks of roach to the place of fishing, which do not allow the bream to sit on the hook first.
This is another reason why the feeder is almost never used when fishing on the bottom in the current, or only the feeder feeder is used. To the bottom, the feed spring conveys very little in the course, but it flies and holds the bottom much worse compared to a conventional sinker. Of the latter, a spoon is most often used on the donk. They put it for reasons of ease of catching: the spoon takes off better and does not catch grass and snags when pulled out, and also goes well along the rocky bottom.
Kormak and stand
Nevertheless, of those numerous options for bottom gear that were used by anglers in the USSR, a donka using a kormak and trimmed with steel was most suitable for catching bream. Kormac is a very large feeder. It was used to deliver a large amount of food to the bottom at a time. As you know, a flock of bream lingers for a long time only where there is enough food for it, and the probability of biting in such a place will be higher. In feeder fishing, to create such conditions, starter feed is used, accurately throwing several feeders at the fishing point.
Donka does not allow you to accurately throw several times in the same place. Therefore, the goal is achieved by using one cast of bait, but a sufficiently large volume. The feeder for such feeding was usually made of a metal mesh and filled with a rather thick porridge. She weighed about 200-300 grams together with a sinker, which often led to breakdowns and overloads of the rod. However, if you use very rough crocodiles, which are on sale even now, you can throw such equipment with them quite safely, without the risk of breakage.
Steel is steel wire that is wound on a spool instead of fishing line. It must be a cold-drawn wire, preferably coated so that it can slide freely through the rings. The wire from a semiautomatic device, which could be easily obtained at that time, is excellent for this purpose.
The wire was used with a smaller section than the nylon line – it was possible to set 0.25 mm and get the same characteristics as on the 0.5 line. In addition, the wire made it possible to perform a very long cast, since it was very weakly blown into an arc and, due to its smaller cross section, slowed down the load less in flight. And the entanglement of loops with wire equipment was much less common than with fishing line, which was ideal for inertia. Such a wire, wound on a coil and moistened with engine oil against corrosion, was called “steel”. Craftsmen threw such tackle at record distances – up to a hundred meters! Fishing on it was more effective than on a rod equipped with a nylon line, but the scope of application was limited only to bottom fishing, and there were very, very many nuances in such equipment.
In modern conditions, there is no need for steel. All its advantages can be obtained using a modern cord and inertialess reels. Cormac is also a relic of the past. Feeder gear easily solves the problem of a large feed, even more than a kormak can give. But it is much more convenient to use.
How to catch bream on the bottom
Fishing is usually carried out on the current. At the chosen place, the angler installs from two to five bottom rods. Fishing for one is rarely used, and fishing rules in many regions do not allow betting more than five. But where it is allowed, you can see a dozen. Bells are used as a bite signaling device on donks. They are quite easy to use and most effective when fishing with several rods, as they allow you to register a bite even in the dark, without the use of fireflies.
In fact, those who claim that it is possible to confuse which fishing rod rings are not right. In complete darkness, a person finds the source of a sound quite easily, and a firefly is not required. This is how auditory perception works, and most people with good hearing do not have problems with it.
It makes no sense to put fishing rods close to each other, since in this case there are more chances that the fish will bite on one of the fishing rods in a large area than on everything at once in a small patch. As a result, there are about eight hooks with bait thrown into the water and a section of the coast about thirty meters long, occupied by the fisherman. A bite on a bottom fishing rod largely depends on chance.
Modern tackle
In the modern sense of the angler, donk is rather a relic of the past. Increasingly, feeder-type spinning rods, feeder rods are used for bottom fishing. Fishing with a feeder rod without a feeder is called a donkey by many, but this is not so. The feeder is much more sporty tackle, there is no such share of luck in biting fish as in bottom fishing, and the experience of the angler decides much more.
However, there is one type of catching where the donk excels more than anything else. This is night fishing for burbot in autumn. It is useless to use bait for catching this fish, as the burbot is a predator. And for catching it, luck, the right choice of place, is of decisive importance, the selection of a nozzle is of secondary importance. What is not a field of activity for a bottom fisherman? A bell at night will be much more effective than a quiver tip on a feeder. A few set rods will increase the chances of a bite.