We are sure that most regular anglers appreciate the core difference between the Delkim indication system and other alarms.  However, we sometimes get asked WHY we have such faith in our method, when it is technically so much harder to get right than a wheel?

Well, we never cut corners at Delkim.  We don’t do ‘easy’.  We strive to be the best.  We want our products to give maximum performance for the user, regardless of the technical challenges.  We are focused on delivering the best possible indication across all conditions, and that is why we have always, and will always, use our direct vibration sensing system.  If you get more indication, you know more about what’s going on in front of you.  And that can only increase your chances of a fish.

Firstly, let us look at how almost all other alarms indicate, using a roller wheel.  No matter whether the wheel breaks a light beam, uses magnets to trigger a sensor,  or uses some other method,  the same fundamental rule applies.  The wheel MUST rotate a certain amount for the alarm to sound, or for any data to be imparted to the internal software.  And this limits the information that you, as an angler, can receive.

Others have tried vibration sensing in conjunction with a wheel on their higher end models, but this is a compromise.  It is still not direct contact between line and sensor, so information will be lost.

We’ve spoken to anglers who don’t really care about all this.  They only fish for carp, only care about full blooded runs, and aren’t interested in sensitivity or adjustability.  That’s fine, but they are missing out on fish.  We are not just saying this as a sales pitch.  It’s an unarguable fact which is illustrated in the rest of this article.

With the Delkim vibration system, the line is in direct contact with the sensor, the tip of which is made from extremely tough PEEK thermoplastic.  The sensor generates a current whenever it vibrates.  It is this current generated by the vibration of the sensor which feeds into our specially developed software.

Our piezo sensor is incredibly sensitive.  For example, tapping the alarm is enough to cause a bleep when response is set to maximum, as is blowing across the sensor.   In fact, that’s part of how we individually test our alarms – by blowing!  It can even be triggered by the right frequency of sound.

The sensor is almost a living thing.  It is actually always moving to some tiny degree in response to its surroundings, and it is constantly generating a signal which is interpreted by our software and modulated according to requirements.

Our software is the unsung hero of our alarms.  It takes many, many hundreds of hours of programming, testing and fine tuning before we are happy.   Taking the raw signal from the sensor, refining, smoothing and interpreting it is no easy task.  Which is perhaps why, being used to much simpler and less useful methods, the ‘wheel men’ haven’t matched us in 30 years of trying!

Of course, this kind of sensitivity isn’t generally needed in many angling situations.  This why we have a huge range of settings, from super sensitive to gale-resistant.  It’s the software which allows this controllability.  For most anglers, a Delkim can be used ‘straight out of the box’ with little no fine tuning.  But the tunability is there for when it is needed, and the high sensitivity end is especially useful in picking up things that a wheel won’t see.   We’ll illustrate the usefulness of our system with some examples, some from personal experience,  and others drawn from feedback from our customers:

• A customer was fishing a carp lake once, casting long to a feature. It was calm, so he had the Delkim sensitivity cranked up to the max.  He started getting liners which were enough to give single bleeps; fish were clearly moving closer in!  He recast and caught a brace of 20’s in short order.  He later found out that the previous angler had baited the closer in spot heavily and the fish had moved in after he left.  A wheel simply would not have picked up these liners and he’d have probably left with a blank.
• One of our staff members does a lot of pike fishing, and most serious pike anglers already understand the usefulness of the Delkim system. Pikers tend to use a tight line and drop arm indicators underneath an open bale arm.  Sometimes the line clip on the drop arm needs to be quite tight to combat conditions, and he has personally seen a fish pick up a bait, kite several feet on the tight line, and drop it again, without his fellow angler’s roller wheel alarm even giving a bleep.  A Delkim would not have missed this.  Pike, especially on pressured waters, can be incredibly shy when they feel resistance.  The Delkim will give an indication of the line tightening even if the drop arm indicator doesn’t move, and furthermore, it will continue to properly indicate when the drop arm comes off and free line is running over the sensor.  With a wheel, there is often not enough friction to cause rotation when the line is running freely over it.
• The above issue with the wheel also applies when using ultralight bobbins for species such eels or roach. ‘Line skip’ can be real problem with wheeled alarms and can lead to the angler having to compromise their indication by using heavier bobbins or tighter lines in order to get the alarm to sound effectively.
• More and more anglers are using alarms when night fishing for barbel. In this situation,  the rod tips are high and the line is tight;  sometimes very tight if fishing one of the big rivers like the tidal Trent,  where anglers have been known to use 12oz of lead just to hold bottom!  This necessitates a tighter baitrunner or drag to stop line being peeled off by the flow,  and as a result,  big liners and bites can bang the rod tip over to a surprising degree without any actual linear line movement.  A Delkim, set correctly, can sense the vibration of these knocks through both the line and the rod itself.  A wheel won’t move and won’t tell you anything.  You could sit there all night using a roller wheel alarm without ever knowing you had fish in the swim.

Of course, there are other advantages over a wheel.  Our sensor can’t freeze and is unaffected by extremes of heat or cold.  It can’t jam.  It works 100% of the time regardless of conditions.  And you still have the ability to tune each ‘D’ range head using a balance of response and speed settings, so that it is very deaf to wind and rain, yet still gives a proper indication of a run.  You have the best of all worlds; incredible sensitivity when that one liner might make the difference between a fish and a blank, all the way through to the ability to tune the heads for the worst conditions, without missing that precious run.

This why we are so confident when we say that Delkim WILL catch you more fish.  There is no other alarm on the market that indicates the way ours does.  Ours is the only alarm which works through direct vibration sensing, maximising the sensing capability as a result.

Because better sensing means more information.  And more information means more fish on the bank.