Who Invented Distance Sticks + 8 Other Trends Explained

Who invented the Ronnie Rig?
It’s been five years since the Ronnie rig went viral back in 2017. Like most angling edges, it had of course been used by those in the know for much longer and its origins lie in the Bedfordshire clay pits of Elstow. The eponymous ‘Ronnie’ and Steve Cliff were behind the rig’s success and its introduction to the masses. Incredibly, on the original rig the hook was attached with three simple Granny knots!

Why and when did everyone fall in love with fishing podcasts?
Podcasts in general have had fluctuating popularity since they emerged as a concept in the mid-2000s. After an initial flurry of interest, things died down until a resurgence over the last five years or so. The first UK fishing podcast was The Carp Cast, which began life in January 2015 with Kevin Nash as the opening guest. Since then, Korda’s audio-visual version has taken production to a new level, while Nash, Baitworks and DNA have all got involved. Including independent productions there are now over a dozen carp-only podcasts available.  

When did everyone start buying baiting poles?
Match anglers have been shipping out cups of bait on the tips of their poles for decades, and plenty of carp anglers have borrowed that practice with homemade devices over the years. Angling Intelligence launched the first commercially available model in the 2000s, but Cygnet pushed the concept further in 2016 with their 12m and then 16m versions. Then last year Nash blew the market apart with the almost endlessly extendable Bushwhacker, which instantly became a bestseller. 

Record Length
The unofficial record for the longest Bushwhacker Baiting Pole is held by Oli Davies, measuring a whacking 80m long!

Who invented Distance Sticks?
The concept of walking your line down a long straight bank in order to clip it up at a certain distance is as old as the hills, but it was the regulations of the British Carp Angling Championships that led to the invention of distance sticks. At an early 2000s final on Furzton Lake in Milton Keynes, Bryan Jarrett and Dave Gawthorne—unable to leave their swims due to the event’s rules—began wrapping line around two tent pegs placed a rod length apart. The first commercially available sticks were made by Cygnet in 2013.

When did everyone start saying ‘lovely times’ to everything?
Lovely times has certainly become ‘A Thing’ in recent years. It’s hard to pin a relatively common phrase on a single person or group of anglers, but if you forced our arm we’d say it’s all down to Nick Helleur who was certainly using the term when he caught the Thames 50 in 2018. Nick is good mates with Oli Davies, who’s also fond of the phrase and is probably responsible for its popularity among the Nash team.

When did carrying an umbrella become fashionable (or just practical)?
We don’t want to sound like your mum, but this shouldn’t be news to anyone—umbrellas are useful full stop. But if you want to know where their current carpy popularity stems from then we’ve got some hunches. Firstly, Fortis launched a camo handheld brolly in 2019 and ultra-cool Alfie Russell was an early adopter as was Scott Lloyd. If you want to go back a bit further, Chris Yates appeared in a couple of iconic scenes with a brolly in A Passion for Angling in 1993. 

When did customising reels become big business?
With the rise of social media. Circa 2012—and almost overnight—came the likes of Kudos Tackle, Reaper Custom Tackle and Custom Reels, all who instantly became household names for those anglers who wanted to steer away from the mass produced, everything-looks-the-same mainstream products. From carbon washers and weighted wooden handle knobs to camo bodywork—it was all on offer, including a set of Daiwa reels which were finished in Sticky Baits’s signature pink paintwork as a special one-off prize—no doubt a Like & Share FB comp of the time!

Who started camoing up their rod butts first?
Whilst the likes of Terry, Nick H and Nigel Sharp were amongst the first to ‘tape up’ their bait buckets and buzzer bars with Realtree’s Camo Tape (hands up who remembers Advantage Timber?!), the ‘rod butt’ trend appears to have been started by Dave Ball ‘Jnr’ circa 2000. Whilst it dropped out of favour for most of the ‘10s, in the last few years that sticky tape has started to make a return to rod butts—namely those owned by the likes of Elliott Gray and Dan Kilgour. 

When did everyone start wearing welly boots?
A bit like your mum popping down the lake with a foil-wrapped dinner, wearing a pair of welly boots used to just be plain embarrassing. ‘Back in the day’ it was a pair of Brashers for the sensible ones, Etnies for the Terry Hearn clones, and battered old white Converse for everyone else in between. Then along came the likes of Alan Blair and Darrell Peck and suddenly a pair of wellies (the correct term is actually ‘field wellies’) are socially acceptable—Nash even sell them now so you can look just like Alan!