Tuesday 15 March 2016

Octoplus Infinity Box Review and River Roach On GroundBait

A warm welcome to this weeks blog update i hope i find you all well and your nets wet.  Its been a crazy week this week with my little boy being really poorly with conjunctivitis so this update was literally only possible thanks to my other half allowing me to lock myself away in the man cave and get my review head on.  This past few weeks has seen me reviewing two products on the bank and those have been the Octoplus Seatbox system and a bait enhancing product called Stinky Stuff.

Links:
Octoplus box: http://www.octoplus.co.uk/bank-seat-box-with-extending-legs.html
Stinky Stuff: http://www.stinkystuff.fishing/

The octoplus review is going to be published on the blog in this update and they have kindly agreed as part of the product review to run a competition later in the year so there will be more information on that later in the year.  The Stinky stuff update as far as i am aware will be on the pondip website so i will link into that review once it goes live.

on to the review:

OctoPlus Infinity Box Review



Product Information:-

- Price £79.99 
- 65litre Capacity
- Dimensions - 58x39x38cm/23x15.5x15"
- Durable and Strong in Cold Conditions
- Strength Tested to 400kg (without Attachable legs)
-Newly developed Material to resist high impact damage
- Attachable legs come encased in bank box
- Lid snaps into place when pressure applied
- Compatible with all Octoplus accessories
- Separate Seat Cushion Available (£17.98)



A little about Octoplus

Established in 1988, Octoplus is home to integrated fishing station systems. Originally designed by a fisherman, Octoplus products take the hassle out of transporting fishing equipment, whilst enhancing the experience to help even the most amateur of fishermen.
In 2013 Octoplus merged with What More UK Limited, who are one of the biggest designers and manufacturers of plastic products in Europe. The Company has continued to grow and provide great products for its customers, as well as, introducing new and innovative products and accessories.

All Octoplus products are designed, developed and manufactured in the United Kingdom, something which is very important to the Company, using only the best quality materials. We believe that the quality customers crave from the products they buy, should never be compromised by the price.

My Review

Octoplus, a name most anglers will be able to relate to either from their youth purchasing these attachments for their seat boxes or as a new angler to the scene looking at their extensive range of top end seat boxes. Octoplus is always a word that screams one thing with anglers and that work is quality.  Their attachments are made to last and this is echoed in my fishing every week as my uncle to this day still uses the same Shakespeare box with the original octoplus attachments.  This box he has fished with for over 25 years now, mostly on the rugged banks of a river, his box and attachments have really been through the mill and still going strong a sign of the quality products this company makes. So when Octoplus asked me to review their new Octoplus infinity range i was delighted to do so.




Doing my research on this product before it arrived it looks like Octoplus are looking to take their already quality and sturdy box accessories and adding this to to a box made to the same high standards and selling this as one robust package to the angler.  My expectations before the box arrived where that it was going to be a quality item with a solid box and hard wearing accessories.  My only concern was the construction of the Octoplus system onto the box itself.

With any review i do the review is not only the product but how the company conduct them selves as a whole and i have to say my whole dealings with Octoplus on this review have been really good.  They quickly replied to my emails and where happy to help, i can only imagine the after sales service would be first class with this company.



The box was delivered promptly and was well packaged with the legs and seat cushion stored safely inside the box i presume to avoid any chance of damage during transit.  My earlier concerns over the manual setting up of the box where none existent as the brackets come already attached to the box as you can see in the picture above and it was a case of pushing the legs through the holes and tightening them up.  Really really simple installation process.

The legs and seat cushion out of the box it became apparent just how much storage this box has to offer you could easily fit in a sizable tackle box, reel, bait and numerous bait boxes inside this deep box and still leave room for you to store the seat cushion and legs back inside if you so wish.  With nothing inside the box was really lightweight yet felt really strong backing up the claims it makes about the weight load it can take.  All set up with the legs on the box it was time to get the bank testing underway the next morning.

As regular blog readers will know there was no way this product was getting tested out on a comfy nicely pruned hard gravel swim at the local commercial this was going right in at the deep end and it was off to the saturated muddy banks of the river.  After the amount of rain we have had of late it was a proper bank test!  My boots sinking into the mud as i set up the box in the peg it was a proper river peg and i was really impressed with how the mud feet sat on top of the mud.



The legs on the lowest setting i sat on the box like this for the first bit.  Being low to the water when trotting can be a secret bonus as you can really dot the float down, this box does allow you to get low to the water.  Setting the legs up to keep the bottom of the box of the ground made for a solid foundation to fish from and the mud feet sinking slightly into the mud soon used their wide surface area to provide a solid platform to fish from.

I fished on the box for a six to seven hour session you will read about below for roach and i have to say as soon as i had got accustomed to the new box, it took a hour or so having fished on the same box for years,  i soon forgot i was sat on a plastic box.  After the six hour session i felt no aches or pains or any discomfort and it was actually a more pleasurable experience than i had expected it to be, certainly as comfy as my £240+ seat box.

The mud feet did their job perfectly in keeping myself, quite a big lad, up out of the mud and all in all a functional fishing box that can certainly handle the toughest of river swims.

Summary -

Having had a few weekends with this product i am made up with it.  I can see me using this as a dedicated river box for my stick float fishing.  Those long walks across farmers field will be a lot easier carrying this light weight box for sure.  The box lived up to its description as it was both strong enough to take my weight and also functional in the hardest of river swims.  The price point at 79.99 (for the box and extending legs) does put it at the high end of the range of boxes of this type but when you think that this box being well designed and produced with octoplus's quality then this box could potentially last you many many years to come, just like my uncles has, a sound  investment.

I will say now i have no qualms that this box will see me through many winters river fishing and then be a solid first box for my daughter and little lad to begin their fishing adventures on.  A product that certainly gets a thumbs up from me, well done Octoplus on another solid, quality product.

River Roach On Ground Bait...

Having had two weeks fishing for roach on maggot and hemp seed i decided to change it up a bit and i decided to replace the hemp seed with a ground bait mix.  The main reason for this change was down to the fact that during the week we had again had another bout of rainfall come through the upper reaches of this river and it meant that come this session the river was running through quite coloured.

The previous sessions identified quite a lot of fish in the swim of all sizes and to help feed the better fish off i decided to lace the ground bait with pinkie.  This small maggot would certainly add sustenance to the ground bait mix and that extra feed content that i hoped would get the fish in the swim and hopefully encourage the bigger fish the feed.  The ground bait mixed on the dry side i sprayed the mix with a good spray of stinky stuff.



The method for the day was a stick float fished over depth to allow the bait to move slowly through the swim.  Along with the pinkie laced ground bait i also had just over 2 pints of white maggot as hook bait and feed.  I was going at the swim in a positive manner hoping to push the fish to feed and really test the peg.

Once my line was sorted and i knew where i would be going down the swim i fed 5 big balls of ground bait right down the line i was going to trot.  A totally alien tactic to me as i am angler who prefers to feel their way into a peg, feeding light at first and only upping the feed once i knew the fish where having it.  This session was like "Edward Shovel hands" had arrived in the swim such was the magnitude of the feeding.   It really was all or nothing on this session.



Sometimes you have to experiment, its a part of learning any river,  this session would teach me just how these fish reacted to ground bait and if it would sort out the better fish.  The bites from the fish where instant over the bed of ground bait that i had fed.  Small roach at first as you would expect from any swim but i did notice that unlike the previous week i did not wait 30-40 minutes for the first fish on the bank.

The bites where there and it was noticeable that the bait had dine the trick in keeping the fish down the swim.  Although i had 20 odd pound last week the fish where right under my feet and i wanted them just down stream as this makes casting and striking easier.  As the first part of the session moved on i began to get in a rhythm and understand how the fish wanted it on the day.  A few maggots fed by hand kept the swim topped up while i noticed that feeding a small nugget of ground bait every so many fish kept the fish rooting round in the swim, nothing huge just a nugget.



As the session developed the odd better fish showed in the peg in and around the 6-8oz bracket.  These would prove to be the bonus fish on the session.  Once in that rhythm you go really into auto pilot and a routine of cast feed maggot and then nugget of ground bait was played out, holding the bait on the spot in the swim brought the bite on most occasions.



We normally fish from first light or just before dark till around 3pm but in this session i only had 6 hours to fish so packing in at 1.30pm it was really hard as the fish where having it.  I felt like sticking it out till dark would see the better fish come but i had to be home and with a few pictures for the octoplus product review to take and the stinky stuff one i had to drag myself from the fishing.




On the day the ground bait mixed with pinkie ans sprayed with the stinky stuff worked really well and the net of 10lb plus of roach showed the quality of the fishing on the day and who knows had i not had to go would we have been looking at a net close to that 20lb mark come end of play?  The better roach where about at the time of packing in but i had to drag myself away.

till next time i wish you all

tight lines

Danny













7 comments:

  1. Cracking write up Danny, I miss my old Octoplus box ;(

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  2. Nice write up as always but i have to say the £80 price for this box seems very expensive and a padded seat for £18 so you are talking £100 for this item which is way to expensive. You could pick up a used old Shakespeare box at any car boot sale with legs for under £10 and as you say they are made to last

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  3. Thank you very much for both taking the time to comment on this blog update, really is appreciated and thank you again.

    Can not really argue with the valid points you make bumbaclat i did mention the price was at the top end of boxes of this type in the summary and only time will tell if these boxes compete with the longevity of the shakey boxes.

    I think, this is only my assumption and opinion, that the extra price comes from the fact if comes ready made with rivets attached and also the fact that the octoplus is hand made in england. Correct me if im wrong but a lot of tackle these days comes straight from overseas production lines.

    thank you again for commenting its a part of writing my blog i wished people did more as sometimes its hard to judge if updates are ok because they get little feedback.

    Danny

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  4. Good review Danny as a returnee to the sport after being away for over twenty years I still use my trusty shaky box, tackle nowadays is a minefield and a lot is meant to catch anglers and not fish! keep the blogs up mate great reading,

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