AFW fabrications have been manufacturing the U tube system from early 2008, and with the valued feedback from fishermen from all over the British isles we will continue to develope our products to meet their varied needs. We would also like to offer our special thanks to Clive Baker and all his fishing collegues in Torquay.Many thanks to Phil Lockley for his assessment of our fish stripping system<

EDITORAL AS FOLLOWS-:-

Extract taken from: Fishing News - Inshore Corner 01 August 2008

Having given a lot of space in this column to line fishing, I was hesitant at featuring a new gurdy/stripper/outrigger system until I saw the Riviera Gurdy-Fish-Stripper, designed by Torquay inshore fisherman Clive Baker and made by the South West firm, Riviera Fishing Products.

Clive phoned me and told me how a large part of his yearly income depends on summer line fishing, mostly for mackerel and/or squid, and that, like me, he cannot master the ‘loop’ system used in authentic mackerel hand line fishing.

A plan for him to bring the gear, bolt it onto my boat and try it out was agreed. I saw the recent FN review by David Linkie (11 July) on the new 8.1m Peterhead Trefjar boat Darcie Girl, and on seeing the pictures thought that something like that for smaller boats may be the answer. What a superbly rigged boat she is.

Trolling for fish – particularly mackerel – is also vital down here. Gone are the winter days when you could just steam out from the land, find a shoal, turn broadside to the wind or raise the mizzen and wind away with a traditional gurdy/outrigger/fish-stripper arrangement (although, you can use the new gear for that type of operation).

Our hand line-caught mackerel is now largely a summer fishery, where the true hand liners at St Ives and Newlyn make the looping method look like a work of art, although it is alien to our lads here in Falmouth Bay and beyond.

But in both ‘looping’ and using whatever type of traditional gurdy gear you have, trolling slowly until you hit the fish is essential. The secret then is to go hard over with the tiller to “keep-on” the fish as the only way to keep the day’s profit at a reasonable level.

I use a traditional gurdy system and once hard over, in theory, the line should stay on the outward roller but much of the time it does not.

It’s OK if you have someone else on the tiller (or secondary controls at hand on a bigger boat) to keep the line on the roller by varying the diameter of the circle you are travelling on, but single handed that’s often not possible and the blessed line flips off the roller’s end and you lose valuable time.

And, when you get it right, the diameter of the incoming roller isn’t large enough to prevent some of the larger fish from flipping off.

“I can’t do anything about that” may be your first thought, but hang on – here in Cornwall, Devon, Dorset and further east, one large mackerel often means £1! You can’t afford that loss.

What’s needed is a standard gunwale mounted gurdy and outrigger, but at the fish stripper a totally new idea, so that it doesn’t matter in what direction your boat is travelling, you can wind away and the fish are gently fed to the inner stripper.

“Well, we’ve got it,” answered Clive when I outlined the problem. A few days later he travelled to Falmouth from Torquay and I saw the gear.

On fitting the prototype to my boat I saw how it had been through many changes, but how the ‘fits any boat’ idea has worked. The stripper and its shape may be the answer that many mackerel fishermen are looking for.

The outrigger looks different as well, using two rollers instead of one, and I was keen to see that working too. However, when we got to my boat, the wind was howling and had swung to SSE and there was no chance of leaving the Helford River, but we did have the chance of trolling along the wider parts of the river and I was much impressed.

I took the boat around all sorts of angles with the line moving around the U shaped, guide-in funnel and it looked most effective.

Clive told me he now loses very few fish and said: “I had the old traditional system and it was too costly – there were fish flying off and nobody can afford that.”

Above: Downward shot of of the guide in-fish stripper unit Note the little box on the left hand side in which you can drop your lead to stop it rolling around the deck when you steam - one of may well thought out adaptations to the design.

Above: The single piece arrangement which enables the skipper to be either side by just flipping the brackets to the required position with a spanner - the job takes less than five minutes

Left: The two wheel outrigger where the end unit can be set at varying positions to accommodate any type of arrangement

The stripper and gurdy are linked together so there’s no need to repeatedly raise the gurdy line to stand between that and the stripper. You can have the wheel on your right or left, it’s no problem to change the arrangement.

What impressed me was the stainless steel construction and how the unit can be modified to suit any boat – you don’t have to order a system custom made for just one boat, and fishermen change boats all the time, as we know.

I saw parts of the gear where I thought some items could be made more robust and I said so, but Clive told me that we were putting the prototype through its paces and that many changes have occurred since, a fact confirmed when I saw a lengthy and well presented profile on the gear, distributed on email from its manufacturers

Following the trials we unbolted the gear, voted to dry-off from the torrential rain at my place with a cup of coffee against doing the same in the pub – well I do have to give the right impression when meeting someone new! Next time Clive it’s the Ferry Boat Inn, they don’t know much about a gurdy but do sell a nice pint.

Clive also explained to me another way of using the gear that eliminates the need for the hooks to travel within the boat, which is a fantastic idea. It’s not new and is not dissimilar to the system on the Darcie Girl, but it’s very suited to smaller boats.

For more information on how to order one of our systems please contact us by telephone or e-mail

Tel: 01803 851702/390990

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