Billy Lane, the wizard of floatfishing - Keith Arthur
The great Billy Lane never won the National, but he came close. When cash prizes were secondary to silverware, nobody had a trophy cabinet as well stocked as his.
Then in 1963 he became England’s first World Champ and that enhanced his reputation still more. There were no such things as feeders or catapults allowed, and Billy’s floatfishing skills made legering redundant.
Nobody had a trophy cabinet as well stocked as Billy Lane
The Missile – a huge loaded, bodied waggler, around long before the term waggler had been coined – helped anglers to fish the wide, deep, waters of the Fens, but the first of his inventions that I adopted was the Trent Trotter. Billy designed this float for very shallow areas of the river. It was basically an Avon float with the stem chopped off directly below the body. An eye was whipped on and the float was fished bottom only, with a bulk shot locking it in place, one No4 shot set at half-depth below the float and another set at double the depth ABOVE the float.
This was what we now call a back shot, and it dragged bottom, slowing the float down. On some Middle Thames winter roach swims, only 2ft deep, it was particularly deadly.
His seminal work on the subject, the Billy Lane Encyclopaedia of Float Fishing, was published in the 1970s and remains a go-to read.
His tackle shop in Coventry is still a haven for anglers, and the maggot farm he set up produces some of the finest bait in the country. Keeping the Lane tradition of winning big matches going, his grandson Tom famously won the 2015 RiverFest title on the River Wye in conditions that even the great man may have struggled to find a float for. Tom’s 4oz feeder did the trick and enabled a second-day performance that was more than enough to clinch the title.
Billy Lane in his shop