It goes without saying that in the unfortunate event of a break off the less the fish is towing around the better, to that end I prefer to use a helicopter rig as theoretically all the fish should be left to tow around is the hooklink. I say theoretically as we can never be certain of all the underwater features/foliage that may hinder the hooklink from coming free. However in my eyes it is certainly a damn sight safer than the hooklink being tied directly onto the end of the mainline or leader etc, leaving the fish potentially towing 100+ yards of line or braid, whether the lead comes off or not.
There is no mistaking the effectiveness of the recently popular ‘Chod’ type rigs and the helicopter is a rig I have been using since I left the dark arts of matchfishing around 17 years ago. But like all good things it does have its drawbacks, and one of those is in weedy waters, where ideally we want the lead to drop off very early on to give us a greater chance of landing our quarry. There are some recent ‘ready made’ rigs from the tackle manufacturers that do just that, but they also look like most ‘ready made’ rigs and in my opinion are way too obvious and obtrusive with bulky parts. So to that end a few friends of mine and I set about trying our own version with a less obvious profile (and a tidier one too).
I’ve been playing around with PVA for some time now, and here I’m going to show two different ways of making pva bags for use. The first method you will see is using a PVA tube, ideal for making a required bag size with little waste, tying both ends of the bag. The second method is still using the PVA tube but this time without any knots at all, instead I’ve been using a heat sealer to seal and cut the bag. Producing minimalistic waste and no reliance on knot strength. In both instances I am demonstrating the bags using maggots as my ground bait.
by Shaun Harrision Following on from my previous blog regarding stopping the bite alarms constantly bleeping in a big wind I would like to share another little method I have developed since I wrote the last bit.
This has all come about since joining a large deep clay pit in Cambridgeshire. I have never fished anywhere before that gets so windy so often. It’s as though it has its own mini climate. The drive to the pit will often see barely a rustle in the trees but once there white caps can often be seen with huge waves breaking over the bank on the prevailing wind. (more…)
I decided to write this piece about one of the hooklink presentations I have been using to good effect this season. I would recommend the use of this rig on firm bottoms such as sand and gravel, light silt and sparse weed, but not fished in thick weed or heavy silt as I feel the hooklink may sit up off the bottom awkwardly.
Just recently I have started using a lot more combi-link rigs again, and for the life of me I can’t remember why I stopped using them in the first place, perhaps the introduction of the coated braids maybe played a part in this. With a lot of anglers switching to combi-rigs made by simply stripping coating off the braid I think I may have been a little paranoid that the fish would suss it out and my results would suffer.
I used them almost all the time in the late nineties and I guess I must have either moved onto a venue that I found an alternative more productive, or as I said, become paranoid about their effectiveness with so many other anglers now using a similar type of presentation. Anyway I have been using them quite a lot again this year on a couple of venues and have tweaked them to suit my requirements really well. (more…)
One of my favourite methods of carpfishing is using PVA bags. We all know it can be an absolutely deadly method of catching carp but even more so when used at long range where the carp have rarely come across this presentation. The first time I tried to cast a PVA bag a long way, the bag didn’t stand up to the job and I wasn’t confident with the overall result. So I decided to set about making a rig which would cast well and not tangle. The rig below is what I now use for all my long range bag work, it’s simple to construct, casts well, tangle free and prevents the bag coming away from the lead on impact with the water.
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