Dial scales or digital scales? What's best?
We ask Terry Hearn for his thoughts...
Question
“Scales… Springs have worked and have continued to work outdoors for years. Electrics/digitals have not and most I talk to with digital scales have experienced problems at one point or another. What are your findings and thoughts?
Shaun Harrison
Like Shaun, I still use traditional dial scales. In general I use two sets, a little pair of 40lb flyweight Reuben Heaton which are always in the bag, and if I’m lucky enough to catch something heavier then I just trot back to the car for a bigger set of Reuben’s, which is always a happy journey however far.
Then there’s the 12lb Flyweights for big perch and chub, which just like the others work perfectly well with no worries about batteries running out. I don’t know a lot about the digital type scales, but I remember testing a set that Dad was given alongside a set of my dial scales, and they both came out with the same weight, so they seemed accurate at least. I’m guessing they’re weather/water-sealed, so it’s probably just battery life to watch out for. I’ve got to be honest though, I think I just prefer to be looking at a traditional needle spinning round a dial, just as it’s always been. I don’t know about everyone else, but I have enough batteries to either charge or change after each trip at the moment anyway. Tablet, phone, camera, half a dozen Ecig batteries, couple of sets of boat batteries, handset, sounder, power pack, laser pens… That’s quite enough for me.
Thinking about it, I do have one set of digital scales but they’ve not been used in a while now, a set of Salter gram scales which I bought especially for weighing big dace from a tributary of the River Kennet a few years ago. These dace were huge, certainly fish to rival the record which still stands at one pound, five ounces and 2 drams. It might sound petty, but an ounce on a 1lb dace is like a couple of pounds or more on a mid-forty carp, which is why smaller specimens are weighed in drams as well as pounds and ounces, and so in that situation normal dial scales weren’t really the one.
