I can't see anything wrong with a few attractor beads, a few years back I changed from brightly coloured beads to imitation pearls, these worked quite well. This was a highly successful way of fishing for flatfish in the UK.

I believe what this match man was trying to put over was the excess of swivels, clips and other, what he described as, 'totally unnecessary scaffolding'.

I have got into the bad habit of automatically using breakout sinkers, a plainly silly idea. This morning with the weed problem these sinkers were a bloody nuisance. I switched to the same weight scud sinker and not only did this really cut down on the weed I was winding to shore, the weights held the bottom perfectly.

I believe sometimes you need to think outside the square and return to what were once considered simple basics. When I used a torpedo from local beaches I had reasonable success. Then one day I got low on bait and fortunately, on a previous set, I had landed a trevalli. Now 40 years ago that was a premium surfcasting bait. I set the torpedo using that fish for bait, very successfully I might add. Up until I sold the torpedo I used trevalli all the time.