Kids Stuff - Sinkers
Michael Bok takes a look at sinkers
What are sinkers and what do they do?
When I first started fishing and received nothing but a small amount of pocket money each week, I used to scrounge through Dad's shed and grab any large nuts he had and use these as sinkers. Old spark plugs were also good sinkers.
A sinker is a weight that is attached to your fishing line. It's purpose is to take the bait into the target area where the fish (hopefully) are and keep it there.
To get bait into out target area we have to cast out our line and if we did not have a weight attached it would be very difficult to cast any distance.
Once we have cast out our line we want the bait to reach the target area and the sinker to hold it there. This is where you need to practice with different size sinkers. What you want is a sinker that is big enough to hold your bait down in the current yet not so big that a fish will be put off once he eats your bait. Fish get frightened and will drop the bait if they feel something attached to it.
Sinkers are usually made of lead and are fairly cheap to buy. They come in many shapes and sizes and it is easy to find one that suits your style of fishing. Their sizes range from the small split shot that you can squeeze onto your line, right through to the large sinkers that are used to fish in very deep water.
You can make your own sinkers by buying a mould and then getting some scrap lead and melting it. This is something you need to do with any adult and is good fun.
If you are using a running sinker it is important that the line feeds through the sinker and that there are no sharp edges in the sinker.