How to use pole rollers — Angling Times

Splintering carbon is the sound pole anglers fear - now learn to reduce expensive breakages...

Pole rollers are essential to allow you to fish the long pole smoothly and effectively. Get it right and you’ll fish in comfort. Get it wrong and you’ll end up with backache or worse, an expensive pole breakage.

There are loads of models on the market from freestanding designs with three or four integral legs, to simple ‘V’ or flat-shaped roller heads that need to be screwed into a bankstick. Freestanding models are best because they can be used on concrete or wooden surfaces where a bankstick won’t penetrate.

HOW TO POSITION THE PERFECT POLE ROLLER

Left: CORRECT

1. Set your pole up to the length you are fishing.

2. Find the pole’s balancing point - where the part in front of you is as heavy as the part behind you.

3. Position your roller at this balancing point. When your pole comes off the roller it remains parallel to the ground and easy to to ship out.

Right: WRONG

If the roller is too close, the back of the pole dips down, forcing the tip upwards. The more you push the pole back, the more those sections protruding behind the roller sag under their own weight. This increases the pressure placed on the narrow piece of section resting on the roller. This fulcrum point is often where the expensive carbon section snaps or splinters.

WRONG

If the roller is positioned too far back you’ll struggle to set the pole down on the roller as the butt section tips downwards under its own weight, forcing the tip section upwards. Even if you do manage to get the butt on the roller, the pole will sag downwards in the centre, creating another stress breakage point.

CORRECT

When fishing two lines - one straight out into the lake and one down the margin - don’t try and use just a single pole roller. If you’re fishing the left hand margin at the 9 0’Clock position, place the second roller in the 3 O’Clock position (see pic above). This eliminates the need to sweep the pole all the way through to the 12 O’Clock position to ship onto your main roller.