Nothing Is Easy Anymore

Adventure Location: Rockport, Texas

All that was wanted was a simple old popping cork to help keep my lures above the bottom grasses in one of the fishing areas.  So off to the Fishing Toys Store here in Rockport. Its real name is Tackle Town but it is actually a toy store for foolish fisher folks.

When popping corks were used in my past during ancient history times, they were a simple foam float tapered from a small end to a larger cupped end that could be caused to splash the water a little.  That attracted some species of fish to your bait or lure. Supposedly.

In happy ignorance the OFM meandered into the toy store to grab a couple of popping corks and be on his way.  Little did he know that he was about to earn a PhD in popping corks before he purchased even one.  There are now popping corks, rattling corks, clicker corks, clacker corks, egg shaped corks with and without rattles, cigar shaped corks with and without rattles and it goes on seemingly forever.  Of course all these corks also come in weighted or unweighted.  To my surprise they even had some of the old style foam corks also in five different sizes and weighted or unweighted.  This was too much information for the OFM.  He needed to go lay his head down and rest from the overload.

Here are four pictures covering the majority of the available corks for fishing this area.

What actually happened is a long session on the internet learning about all the changes in popping cork designs.  It definitely will not be considered improvements.  Mostly it seems like it is just great marketing to move more money out of shoppers’ pockets.

So after three hours of learning of the “new” techniques for the new types of popping corks, all of which is exactly like we did it a hunnert years ago, the OFM Fishing Team headed out for a second round of shopping. This time we hit Wal-Mart to see what the lower co$t equipment looked like.  Wal-Mart even had some corks that were not at the toy store.  OH MY GOODNESS.  The Ofm prefers to have a cork that can be taken on and off the line as needed instead of having to cut the line and re-rig the set up for each change in water depth.

A trouble with the switch to braid line is that it is so slippery that the normal foam cork that is held in place by a small plastic plug in the end will not stay in place like for when monofilament is the line in use. The Fishing Team wanted a removable float that would not slip. Wal-mart had some!  We chose two models to try out.  These have small spring loaded hooks on each end that the braid can be wrapped around to hold the cork in the proper position.

OFM corks get a white stripe on the end that is supposed to be up in use. That lets the OFM have a chance to see if they are workinf correctly.

And on trying them out today they worked very well.  The lure seen in the picture above did not entice any fish to need unhooking though. That is not the corks fault.

The OFM Fishing Team is now set up to fish the 1 to 3 feet deep water in the area and not get the lures all tangled in the sea grasses.  Catching those ten pound fish in the sea grass area will go a long way toward trying to have tooooo much fun. TheOFM.