Boxing clever when you're pike fishing

I know people whose tackle boxes are works of art. They lug everything they could possibly need, all tidily arranged accessory by accessory, down to the last float, bead or swivel.

There's a much simpler way of doing it. Stow all your gear at home and just transfer what you're likely to need for the day into one or two of those snap-lock lunch boxes you can find in different sizes in most supermarkets.

While in an ideal world, you'd probably use a different float set-up on a pit than you would on a drain or river, you can get by with more or less the same rig on all three if you carry floats and weights in a couple of sizes. Legering's even simpler. One, two or three ounce lead, plus some polyballs and powergum in case you need to pop a bait up off the bottom.

So what you actually need comes down to a couple of small boxes, with room to spare for spare hooks and wire in case you need to knock a trace up on the bank, plus twiddling stick, braid/wire cutters and a  sharpening stone for touching up hook points.

Smalls bits and pieces like spare beads, snaps, swivels, run rings etc go in one of those little folding bits boxes you can pick up for a couple of quid. A few spare traces on a home-made rig bin and it's job sorted, taking up less than half the space in the rucker. Simples.