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Feeder and donka are two similar ways of fishing. Both use weights to hold the bait to the bottom and line to shore. They have common features, but there are also differences. What is the difference between a feeder and a donkey, which tackle is more successful and where is it better to catch?
What are bottom and feeder gear
As in one well-known example, the question of how a donk differs from a feeder can immediately be answered briefly and clearly in general terms – nothing. By itself, the donka is so diverse that it can completely absorb all feeder fishing in all its manifestations. The fact is that donka is traditional for our country. Long before the appearance of the feeder in its modern form, both feeders combined with a sinker and similar bite signaling devices were used. The feeder, on the other hand, developed in England, but all the principles of catching it are the same as those of the donkey.
However, the feeder should be singled out in a separate class because the industry produces a whole class of fishing gear for it, allowing you to fish exactly as intended for it, most effectively using feeder fishing technology, and not bottom fishing. The main features of the feeder, which distinguishes it into a separate class:
- Using a feeder combined with a sinker
- Using a flexible tip to signal a bite
- The feeder is not an unauthorized tackle, unlike many donoks, and requires the presence of a person in order to make a hook when biting.
Unlike the feeder, the industry produces a small range of gear specifically for the donkey. Most anglers make donks from spinning rods that have a lot of test, from carp rods, from everything that is at hand and that can be used for fishing. The following is a detailed overview of the components and types of ground tackle and understands what similarities and differences they have with feeder fishing.
Zakidushka
Perhaps the most distinctive tackle from the feeder. A throwaway is a type of donk that uses a sinker with a fishing line to be thrown into the water with your hands. She usually does not have a rod or has a symbolic rod-stand. Sometimes a reel is located on it, usually inertial, but it does not participate in casting. It stores a supply of fishing line and is sometimes used when playing prey.
The simplest hook is a reel with a fishing line, at the end of which a load is attached, and above – from one to three leashes with hooks. More than three leashes are rarely set, as there are difficulties with casting, the hooks get confused. It happens that the leashes are placed below the main load sliding along the fishing line. Casting is carried out by fixing the reel on the shore, winding the line from it in the right amount and carefully folding it on the shore. The load of snacks is taken in hand. Usually between it and the fishing line there is a piece of string about 60 cm in the form of a loop. The fisherman takes the line, the load hangs down. The load is swinging, then it is released and flies into the water. Behind him goes fishing line and hooks with bait.
Casting distance, as a rule, is small – up to 20-30 meters. However, this is still more than the range of fishing with an ordinary float rod, and in those places where you can’t reach the fish from the shore, this fishing method is very good. It can also be used from a boat. Tackle is unusually cheap, compact, can be placed in a small bag along with bait. Its sensitivity is low due to the fact that a rather thick main line is traditionally used for it. The fish are usually self-hooking.
The caster is rarely used as an independent method of fishing, most often it is placed on the shore during a picnic or during fishing with float rods as an auxiliary to provide additional by-catch of fish. The only thing it has in common with the feeder is that the nozzle lies motionless on the bottom, held by a fairly heavy sinker. Usually, a feeder is not placed on a snack, but sometimes so-called nipples or springs are used.
Tackle allows you to attach a larger number of leashes with hooks, which are usually attached after casting and do not interfere with it. Also, such tackle is more convenient when fishing at night, since the usual bait will get confused in the dark. The rate of fishing on a hook with an elastic band is several times higher than on a regular one and makes it practical when catching small fish with frequent bites. The rubber band is used when catching a predator – the live bait is delivered to the depth without hitting the water when casting and remains alive. This method of catching a predator is very prey, although not very sporty.
There are numerous variations on the rubber-dock donkey, which are a kind of self-indulgent tackle. Fishing on them, like on a tyrant, is carried out by twitching the main fishing line with an elastic band, behind which hooks with natural or artificial baits are twitching, and has much in common with fishing on a drop shot. The fishing industry produces an independent range of products for snacks, such as a reel that sticks into the ground on the shore, and a round self-dump, which allows you not to lay out the line on the grass where it can get tangled, but to keep it on the self-dump in your hand. Also in the store you can buy a number of ready-made equipment.
Fishing line
The difference between the feeder and the donkey is the use of thinner lines and braided cords for the first. This is due to the fact that for the feeder it is necessary to register bites with hooking by the angler, and for good registration you need a thin fishing line. The main reason why a thick one is used on a donk is that the load with it often has to be torn out of the snags. They also put a thick fishing line for a snack, since the fight is done without using a rod. At the same time, again, the fish can wind a lot of grass on the fishing line, lead it into bushes and snags. Power fighting is the main feature of bottom tackle. The use of a braided cord in a donk is practically never found. Especially when fishing for hooks, where a soft line laid out along the shore will certainly get tangled.
When using a rod with a donkey reel, you can find exotic rigs such as using wire instead of line. The fact is that steel wire will be much stronger and much tougher than fishing line, does not stick and practically does not give beards. Its extensibility is lower than that of a cord. When the main diameter for the fishing line that was put on the bottoms was a vein of 0.5 mm, they caught with a wire with a diameter of 0.3-0.25 mm. This allowed me to throw further. Now, with the advent of cords, there is no need to use wire, especially since the bite is less visible with it.
Bite alarm
It is believed that for a feeder, a bite signaling device is a quivertip. Rather, it serves as the main signaling device. Bells and swingers of all possible designs have long been used as additional ones. In bottom fishing, the bell or bell is the main signaling device. Undoubtedly, it will register the very fact of a bite better than any quiver-type, it works great in the dark, it does not require you to constantly look at it to understand that the fish have bitten. However, how the fish behaves, how it pulls, led or not, how it swallowed the bait, the bell will not show. Here the quivertip will be out of competition.
Swingers are also used in fishing. The simplest of them is a piece of clay suspended from a fishing line that goes into the water. He twitches and sways when biting, and the angler knows when to hook. You can make such a signaling device right on the shore.
In bottom fishing, nod signaling devices are also used. Particularly the lateral nod. It is clearly visible to the angler and can be combined with a bell. However, it has a drawback compared to the quiver tip – it does not allow casting with a reel with it, and when pulling out such a signaling device, it is also better to remove it. Therefore, the feeder quiver-type is still a more advanced signaling device.
And in bottom fishing, anglers most often look at the bite at the tip of the rod. In the first feeders, they did not make a separate quiver-type at all, but simply put a monolithic and sensitive upper knee. Many fish on a light donk with match rods, the upper knee of which registers a bite no worse than the flexible tip of the feeder.
Rod
Donka with a rod appeared in the Soviet era, when the industry began to produce high-power spinning rods and good inertial reels. The modern analogue of Soviet spinning is crocodile spinning. However, even before that, donks with a rod, converted from float rods, were used. Here the nozzle was held at the bottom by a sliding sinker. The float did not hold the load on the weight, but simply pulled the fishing line and transmitted a bite signal. They often used a sinker-feeder, such fishing was popular for crucian carp.
With the advent of spinning, it became possible to make long-range casting. This opened up the possibility of fishing away from the shore, and many anglers who did not have a boat switched completely to bottoms. The rod, due to the rigidity of the tip, did not perform well as a bite signaling device. Be sure to put a bell, swinger or other signaling device with such a donkey. Even now there are many anglers who prefer to fish with hard spinning rods with bottom rigs. When catching burbot in the autumn on a bunch of worms and fish meat, this method will be the most practical.
Carp rods also did not escape the fate of becoming the basis for the donkey. In this case, you can use the toughest and cheapest of them, which makes bottom fishing very affordable. A long rod for catching carp is more convenient than a spinning rod for donks in that it allows you to perform a longer “ejection” cast without using the elasticity of the blank, which is critical for heavy feeders that can simply break the blank during a sharp cast. Yes, and leashes with a smooth cast are not confused. When playing, a long rod allows you to quickly raise the fish to the surface, which is convenient when catching bream. It also allows you to raise the line high when fishing in the current, being placed almost vertically and removing part of the line to the abandoned load from the water.
Feeder tackle involves the use of a quiver-type rod with rings close to the blank. This makes it easier to catch. Throwing tackle with it is much more pleasant than with hard spinning. There is a gradation of feeders in terms of speed, length, class, designed for certain fishing methods. On their own, these rods are much more comfortable, though more expensive, and in many cases, the reason why bottomers don’t go all the way to the feeder is the price.
Coil
Here, the feeder and the donkey have more similarities than differences. It is reliably known that the first feeders, like donk spinning rods, were equipped with inertial coils. Therefore, it is wrong to say that the use of inertia in a feeder translates it into a donkey class. On the contrary, the inertia has a number of advantages over the inertialess – very high power, the presence of a ratchet, extraordinary reliability and a sufficient supply of stored fishing line, even of a large diameter. The inertia copes poorly with spinning lures due to their low weight, but heavy loads and feeders fly very well with it. In many respects, this determined the popularity of donkey spinning, because catching in this way with this tackle is easier than with spinning. True, there are difficulties with limiting the casting distance, but in this case, either home-made limiters can be recommended, or carp methods with line marking can be used. On an inertialess feeder coil, a clip is used.
At the same time, competent casting of cargo with inertia without a beard requires skill. And inertialess vehicles have become more accessible than they were in Soviet times. Therefore, many bottom fishermen have completely switched to spinning, and now you can see the old-style reel only in the hands of an oldfag bottom fisher.
Sinkers and feeders
Most often, the arguments in favor of the difference between the feeder and the donkey indicate that the feeder is not used in the donk, but it is used in feeder fishing. In fact, feeders were originally used in bottom fishing. Ring fishing using a massive feeder can be considered a kind of donkey.
Fantomas, nipples, springs and similar varieties were used for fishing very widely, although they were banned by fishing rules in the USSR, as well as fishing with a ring for unknown reasons, along with an elastic band bottom. Flat feeders were also used. In bottom fishing, massive feeders with a net – the so-called kormaks – were sometimes used. They made it possible to throw a very large amount of food along with the hook in one cast. In feeder fishing, this function is performed by the starting feed. However, most often in bottom fishing, a regular load is used. They put both deaf and sliding sinkers of various types: balls, olives, pyramids, etc. The load-spoon has become the most common. It does not hold the bottom very well, but it glides perfectly over water bumps, roots and snags, pops up when pulled up and easily passes grass patches without hooks. But he has one drawback – he twists the line a lot when reeling out quickly.
Fishing tactics
This is where the fundamental differences begin. Donka and feeder differ in that they have fundamentally different tactics. In feeder fishing, the effect is achieved through a preliminary search for a promising area, feeding it and fishing in a narrow patch, where the equipment is thrown over and over again. In the bottom – due to the large number of gear placed along the shore, the likelihood of a bite increases. Few people are concerned about casting accuracy here, but if desired, it can be achieved no worse than when fishing with a feeder.
As L.P. Sabaneev said, the most correct bottom fishing is carried out on the river. Here the bottom relief is predictable, and the main thing in the case of a river is to throw it approximately at the end of the slope, where the fish likes to stand. It does not matter whether it will be to the left or to the right, and even in length a difference of a couple of meters will not greatly affect success. However, in the presence of a feeder and when feeding, it is still worth adhering to a certain accuracy, the mentioned author also wrote about this. A large number of donok or hooks placed along the shore allows you to fish continuously in a significant area where the fish will definitely take. If not for all fishing rods, then at least for one or two. When it is possible to meet fish in a large area, for example, at dawn at the time of the exit, this is more effective than feeding and catching only one area.
Moral Aspects
In terms of sportiness of fishing and respect for nature, the feeder is head and shoulders above the usual donkey. Firstly, the tackle itself was conceived in such a way that the fish is hooked by the angler. She does not have time to deepthroat the nozzle and takes her lip. If they plan to release it in the future, it remains alive and healthy and goes back into the reservoir.
In the donk, unlike the feeder, the fish often manages to swallow the nozzle very deeply. As a result, a lot of fish die due to the imperfect mechanism of bite registration. However, it all depends on the particular donkey, and with sufficient skill and tuning, it allows you to register the bite of even small fish no worse than feeder tackle. For example, when a ruff is purposefully caught with a donkey on live bait or for fish soup, a light feeder rod with a quiver tip is used.
Another moral aspect is the unsportsmanlike nature of bottom tackle. The fact that most anglers use it on a self-tacking basis, with a large number of rods, often even exceeding the norm for the number of hooks allowed by the rules, gives the donkey a bad reputation. Indeed, several donoks, next to which the angler does not have to be all the time, will be an unsportsmanlike way of fishing. However, this is not always the case, and again it all depends on the specific setting of the donkey and the behavior of the fisherman on the pond.