I'm sure that we all spend hours playing with different rigs in an effort to come up with the ultimate answer to ensuring we hook as many fish as possible when they pick up the bait. I personally have spent hundreds of hours over the last 30 odd years tying, testing and retying rigs. I've caught fish on many of those rigs and some I've tied up and never used, binning them before ever chucking them in the pond...
The Internet and Carp magazines are full of the next new rig fads. No doubt some of them work very well.
It's my certain belief that any rig will catch fish, I have seen what I consider to be very badly tied rigs catch fish much to my surprise. But as long as a fish sucks it into it's mouth there is always the possibility of the hook catching hold before it's rejected and blown back out.
It's the percentage chance of the hook catching in the mouth that is the crucial point. There are many variables here, the mechanics of the rig itself, the manner in which the fish feeds and what it does with regard to movement once it sucks in the bait, the bottom structure over which we are fishing dictates which type of rig we might choose or be forced to use...
I'm sure by now most of you will have seen the Korda Underwater video's, myself included, and whilst fascinating to watch I found them very demoralising watching how many times some seemingly very good rigs were picked up and blown out without the fish getting caught. Sometimes the fish did get pricked by the hook but were able to shake the hook out using the lead as a lever the 'throw' the hook. So there is another variable to add in, what happens after the fish realises it has been hooked. It isn't just the hook link that needs extreme consideration but also the lead arrangement.
My own rigs have evolved over the years of course, from simple braided hair rigs to coated braids to Blow back rigs and Chod rigs. I've used many different materials including mono and Fluorocarbon and Amnesia, all with different hook patterns to try and find the holy grail and they all caught me fish. The standard advice is to choose a rig you're confident in and stick with it. This is good advice and I follow it myself whenever possible. Once I found a rig I was happy in I stuck with it. I have stuck with one type of rig for the last few years, and it has served me very well catching me plenty of fish and some good one's at that. There's nothing overly special about it, it's a normal blow back rig using coated braid. There are however a few crucial aspects as far as I am concerned that make it what I believe to be the most efficient version of a Blow back rig that I can come up with.
Firstly I use a rig ring on the hook for the blow back aspect rather than trapping the hair with silicone tube. The problem with using silicone tube, and this is well known, is that the rig will not reset, once a fish has picked it up and ejected it, the rig is rendered almost useless as the silicone tube will be blown back to the eye of the hook, trapped there by the silicone. Sure there is always a chance that the hook will catch if another fish picks it up again, but mechanically the rig is not fishing as effectively as it was before.
The second aspect of my Blow back rig is that I use one of the new generation of stiff coated braids. Though difficult to work with when tying rigs, these super stiff - rigid once steamed - materials are I believe, very difficult for Carp to deal with, plus they are sitting out almost perfectly straight on the lake bed, so it only takes minimal movement from the Carp to make the hook turn and catch in the mouth. I do strip some of the coating off to allow the hook to turn, but not by the eye, I leave about 2cm of coating on as it exits the eye leaving almost an extended line aligner using the stiff coating. I strip about 1.5cm of coating off and add a large piece of putty where the stiff coating starts again, almost like I would when fishing a nailed down pop up...
Which is the third aspect, I believe this helps the hook to turn quickly and get dragged downwards towards the bottom lip. In practice this works about 80% of the time but sometimes I have found the hook to be in the scissors which simply means the fish has turned to the side as it picks up the bait, the rig still working as intended as the hook hold is inevitably in the lower part of the scissors. I always use this rig with a Snowman set up, with a small 10mm pop up on top of a 15mm bottom bait making for a slightly more buoyant hook bait ensuring it's easier for the fish to suck in. This also ensures the hook bait is sitting virtually on top of the hook which is lying flat on the lake bed, not that I am convinced fish recognise hooks for what they are, but it helps to add to the subtlety of the overall presentation. The rig is tied in conjunction with a curve shank hook which promotes a very aggressive flip. I can attribute a better catch rate than ever before to this rig, and I believe it is an extremely efficient rig, however it is only suitable for clean bottoms over gravel or clay, it definitely isn't a rig for fishing in weed. Most of my local fishing is on weed free waters so this isn't an issue and I will use this rig wherever I go as long as I can fish it over a clean bottom.
The other rig I have ultimate faith in is the Chod rig. Now I understand the Chod rig is a bit Marmite, some love it and some hate it. I started on the hate side and moved over to the love side once I found out what I was doing wrong. You could say I changed from the dark to the light side! There are three crucial aspects of the Chod Rig that many people get wrong which is what leads to the notorious hook pulls that are the result of not getting it right. The first is simply in the tying and positioning of the curve in the stiff bristle filament. The second and most critical aspect is that the Chod rig is often over weighted. it needs to be fish as a critically balanced bait. Lead core in my opinion is too heavy for the Chod rig and then some people add extra weight, this is the single reason why it won't work properly. The rig needs to be fished on a leadless leader or as a naked version straight onto Fluorocarbon mainline. The last part that many people get wrong is not allowing the Chod to run up and down the mainline enough. Trapping it in place tightly between two beads so there is no free movement is a mistake, either allow it to run the full length of the leader from the lead to the top bead or as I prefer leave a gap between the two beads of a few inches to allow the rig to run between allowing the fish to suck the rig in further and thus facilitating a better hook hold. In short the fish needs to be able to suck the rig off the lake bed just as a normal rig would allow it to. This is why an un weighted leader is the best option, pinning the rig down with leadcore or extra putty only serves to prevent this. A very buoyant hookbait is also the best choice, if it's still too buoyant and lifting the mainline or un weighted leader off the bottom then by all means add some putty but only so the rig sinks super slowly and only just touches the bottom. All these tweaks allow the rig to function better and reduce the risk of losing fish through hook pulls as it allows the fish to such the bait in much more freely.
Conventional wisdom suggests that 'if it isn't broke don't try and fix it', and I would agree with that statement, but as anglers we are always trying to gain those extra percentage points and so I will be experimenting over the next few weeks with a version of another well known rig but with my own little tweaks. I am hoping it will perform as well as my current rig but will offer more versatility when fishing over different bottom structure including weed. If I'm happy with it I will write about it here, If it's rubbish and doesn't work, well it's back to my old faithfuls!
I mentioned the Lead arrangement as also being crucial as to what happens after the fish has picked up the bait and pricked itself. With so many waters being extremely pressured these days, the Carp have learned to deal with being hooked almost on a casual basis as if it's an almost normal occurrence, which it is given that they are being fished for pretty much 24/7. They have learned that by shaking their heads as such, they can dislodge the hook with the weight of the lead, as you may have seen in the Korda video's. Years ago I used to receive odd single bleeps or knocks on the rod tip, I would put this down to fish bumping the line in the vicinity of the hook bait, but in reality I now realise it was more likely fish 'getting away with it' and dislodging the hook having actually picked up the bait. This happens far less these days than before, because my rigs are clearly converting more pick ups into fish. However having said that I wrote in an earlier blog of how I believed the Yateley Match lake fish were doing me at night as I was getting several bleeps which didn't lead to a run and in the morning I found my rigs in slightly different places to where I had placed them the night before. This happened not just once but two or three times which is what led me to make my conclusion. The worst thing was I was using my old faithful rigs, which of course diminished my faith in them....BUT.. in actual fact the rigs were doing their job and there was nothing wrong with them, they were clearly hooking the fish. In reality what was at fault was my lead arrangement which was a standard inline set up. I was fishing over a clean gravelly area and the surrounding weed wasn't going to be a problem as it wasn't thick or up to the surface and therefore the thought of discharging the lead wasn't an issue, however the fish were able to dislodge the hook using the weight of the lead. Had I been using a drop off lead set up, or a helicopter rig with a friction fit bead that slid every time they tried to shake it might have been a different story..
A bit of a schoolboy error on my part, but I keep telling myself I can't be brilliant all the time !! To get the pick ups was an achievement, to not convert them into fish on the bank, very frustrating and I should have known they would be extremely wise indeed!
Having said that I used a drop off lead on a difficult session on Yateley pads lake due to there being weed present, The first time I had really encountered a situation like this were it would be prudent to discharge the lead. I managed to get a take and had a fish on for a minute or two whereupon it simply came adrift.. Now at this point I will say that my hooked fish to landing ratio is very good and apart from when I have had to use Barbless hooks I really am not in the habit of dropping fish. Do I put it down to bad luck or do I look at the drop off lead arrangement? Perhaps the lead discharged too early not having had chance to drive the hook point in far enough before being shaken off by the fish? It's my feeling that this is what happened so I now have a bit of a headache and several hours of experimentation regarding the perfect moment to allow the lead to discharge. So far I am not happy with the results of the tweaks I have made but I hope to arrive at a satisfactory system soon. In the past on weedy waters I have always searched for the thinner patches and then deposited a solid PVA bag on them with a light inline lead and had no problems, but I would say the weed was nothing like I have encountered on the Yateley lakes and so I was able to present well with the solid bags and the small leads were really not an issue.
This is something I will also be addressing over the next few weeks and certainly when I return to Yateley I won't be making that same mistake!
Which brings me onto the palm test.
Once we have tied up our latest super efficient ( we hope! ) creation, we need to test it. The standard practice over the years has been to drag it across your palm of your hand and see how quickly the hook flips over and catches in the skin. Not only how quickly but also how many times out of a hundred times dragged across it actually does it! I have seen a few comments here and there about the palm test being a load of rubbish and bearing no relevance to what actually happens in the water with a bait attached. While I agree your rig will behave slightly differently once you have some buoyancy added from the water or a buoyant hook bait I still believe the Palm test is a reasonable guide but perhaps not a definitive test. I will continue to use the Palm test and always take into account the fact that there may be subtle differences once any buoyancy is added when a bait is attached. My recent rig experiments have taken this into account as I want to use a wafter hook bait so the rig has actually been designed with this in mind.
Below: Whether you believe in the palm test or not, I feel its a fair guide as to how your rigs are working. OUCH!
