My seven year old lad is into fishing. He loves it.

That means I spend a fair bit of time in the tackle shop buying things like worms, method feeders and other totally extraneous bits and bobs in readiness for another weekend spent next to a pool, often in the rain.

Now if you’ve never been in a tackle shop – and I mean a proper tackle shop, not somewhere like Go Outdoors – you really are missing something in your life.

Imagine a local pub that certainly doesn’t sell food and is populated by proper blokes.
Not blokes like me who work in this game – proper blokes.
Some retired, some in camouflage, some built like wrestlers.

A land where they don’t use words like ‘granular’ and ‘holistic’.

So picture, if you will, a forty something bloke in a blazer, jeans and brogues waltzing through aisles of keep nets, pole rollers (come on, keep up) and the like, while proper blokes exchange opinions on drop shotting, helicopter rigs and spods.

I sheepishly take my purchases to the counter and speak to Pete who I think has taken pity on me and my new found plight.

I place an array of fishing bits on the counter and while I dig out my wallet to pay, Pete places most of my items back on the shelf display behind him.

When he catches my expression of puzzlement, he wearily explains in his black country brogue: “Your lad likes to catch big carp. This stuff ay no good for that. This stuff woh get him what he’s after”

And that’s it. I’m too afraid to argue. Because Pete is a proper bloke and he knows what he’s talking about.

He then proceeds to place a bag full of grey pellet thingies on the counter that cost a fraction of all the crap I’d put in my basket originally.

I leave the shop, the weekend arrives and my lad catches a carp that heavier than his birth weight.

Thanks Pete.

At One Black Bear, we’re a full-service agency with the mantra ‘Sometimes it’s an ad’, we don’t try to sell you stuff you don’t need.
If you don’t need ads, we won’t advise that you to run ads just because they make us more money.
If there is a better solution, we’ll do something else.

That way you’ll catch exactly the people you need to and none of the ones you don’t.