After fishing with cousin Kendall on the Gold Coast late last year, I purchased one of the cool tools that he had on his boat that made fishing, more specifically upgrading fish, a whole lot easier.
I have spoken about culling clips and balance beams before here and the clips I have owned up until now are probably not the best quality but they did the job. The new ones on the other hand are from a company called Ardent and are named the SmartCull. Today they arrived at my doorstep from across the Pacific.
The SmartCull are obviously made for the USA fishing scene. They have rotating dials on them so that weights can be recorded up to 15 pounds 15 ounces and would dramatically assist in the culling process…..if we used the imperial measuring system in Australia.
Why did I buy these clips? Despite the fact that the weight functionality is useless to us in Australia, I liked the idea of having 6 impact resistant, colour coded, floating culling clips. From what I saw of Kendall’s clips, they are well made, easy to use and with the sixth clip on hand it made upgrading fish that little bit easier. Time will tell how well they work and hopefully I can come up with a solution to utilise the rotating dials.
Hey Ian,
what clips do the y come with? and what clips are you using on your culling beam to lift the fish?
Al,
It’s a bit hard to explain the clips but the mechanism is similar to a safety pin. As for culling beam, I think I’ll just use the culling clips and hook them directly to my beam.
Erm…….. why don’t you use 2 pounds 7 ounces to signify a 27cm fish, 3 pounds 5 ounces for a 35cm and so on?
I think that’s what he will be doing. Because he saw me do that
Genius!
My cull clips are colour co-ordinated with a corresponding plastic board that I write the length and time I caught the fish. It serves 3 purposes:
1. Lets me find small fish quickly i.e. red tag has smallest fish
2. Lets me track when I caught fish i.e. 2 x 25cm of equal or similar weight, will mean the one I’ve had the longest gets upgraded (less stress on fish) and also helps with tracking my day (caught fish early, caught fish late etc)
3. My memory is pretty bad, more than once have I had to ask a non-boater/team mate “how many do I/we have?”, so my culling board gives a visual reminder of how many I’ve caught.
I like the look of these. As you posted on facebook you will need to change the clips to make them fit a bream. I will look forward to how you solve that.