Recently a friend of mine got back into carp fishing after an 18 year gap. He used to do a fair bit of angling with another mate of mine and was a pretty accomplished angler. Family commitments became paramount until last year, when his kids had all grown up and he decided to start up carp fishing again. The main thing that has changed in that intervening period is the AVAILABILITY of good quality fishing tackle and bait.
Nowadays you can walk into any tackle shop and be confronted with what can only be described as a VAST array of hooks, hooklinks, leads, clips, beads and the like. At the risk of sounding like an old fogey, when my mate gave up fishing we were very limited on what was available . Hooks were most definitely not as sharp as they are now, in fact myself and another mate were going through old packets of hooks from that bygone era just the other day and it was amusing to see just how blunt they were, and they were the best of the bunch!! Hooks that we thought sharp at the time such as The ‘Sprite’ carp hook ,you just simply wouldn’t put on nowadays due to the fact that you’d regard it as totally blunt!
The first fish that I ever caught out of Yateley was on a size 6 Mustad O’ Shaunessy, now these hooks were ok but you had to check each hook to make sure that the hook point was not bent right over in a U shape!!! Now that’s what you call ‘Old School’!
Amongst the better hooks eventually available were the Drennan Super specialist which I still rate as a pretty decent hook today and the Carbon specimens which were probably the sharpest hooks on the market at the time but unfortunately had a downside of snapping occasionally, usually at the vital moment!! I remember being shown these Trout hooks in a size 8 which were incredibly sharp for the time but nobody could get hold of them in any quantity.
Rigs were a closely guarded secret, obviously the hair rig was the norm fished in various styles but usually tied on with a 4 turn grinner and then passed back through the eye with a bit of thick tubing pushed over it. Things that we matter- of- factly take for granted like the no knot rig hadn’t been invented yet and shrink tubing did not exist.
There were just a few lead shapes available, either an Arlessy bomb type lead fished running style with a hard bead between it and the swivel and a stop up the line to create a bolt rig effect or the newly invented in- line ‘Zipp’ lead which was either fished on a length of stiff tubing or 2mm silicone which had a nasty habit of floating up off the bottom so had to be pinned down with a shot pinched onto a bit of Dacron tied round the end of it which was ok but still created a big ‘n’ shape of tubing lifting up off the bottom too. The helicopter set up had not been invented yet, imagine what a revelation that was, tangle free casting!! Incidentally one of the best ways of getting a tangle free cast was to use a stringer, there was only one kind of PVA string available which was that made by Gardner tackle. Trouble was with this stuff if you didn’t stretch it enough before you put the baits on, in colder water temperature the stringer would come back in the morning still intact!! Pukka!
Line choice was either maxima which was supple but not all that abrasion resistant or sylcast. Hooklink choices were mono or black Dacron, there were no proper braided hooklinks available let alone coated hooklinks. I remember when Kryston multi strand came out which was lovely and supple but it tangled like anything!! If one strand caught on your terminal set up then the whole lot became this horrible tangled birds nest which had to be discarded and then you’d have to start again! We ended up devising all kinds of fiendish ways of coating the hooklink with things like icing sugar made into a paste which was smeared up the hooklink to make it stiff and castable. Kryston Silkworm was a progression from this, braiding the multi strand up with brown strands to create a much thinner more supple hooklink than the thick Dacron we were used to. In short, things were very much different than they are today.
I think you get the picture!! So rather than continue on my whimsical little reminisce i’ll get back to the point!! Having got back into the old carp game my mate was faced with the daunting prospect of coming back up to speed on the latest rigs and tactics. The basic principles of UK carp fishing are still the same, OBSERVATION, WATERCRAFT and ANGLING SKILL. This, combined with a reasonable know how of rigs, tactics and bait will stand you in good stead. He had all of these facets available to him but just needed to be given a quick run through of’ what was what’ to save any confusion!!
This basically goes back to my piece on keeping it simple ie one rig for a bottom bait, one for a wafter etc and that was what I told him, keep it simple and adjust the rigs to the waters you’re fishing. Easier said than done!! The poor bloke left my house muttering something about ‘Information overload’ and that his ‘Brain was hurting’!
The key point that i wanted to make was FINE TUNING . It’s quite simple to say ‘Just use one rig for a bottom bait, wafter, pop up’ etc but this is said for a reason based on experiences gained over a long period of time fishing, trying different things in different situations and finally coming to a conclusion that those particular rigs did the job that you asked of them when required.
I showed my mate the bottom bait hair rig that I use all the time incorporating a size 8 Atomic Claw hook, a bit of tubing on the bend, shrink tubing over the eye and then cranked over with 15lb jel e wire. Well you would imagine that was quite straightforward but apparently not so. The things that I habitually use and incorporate into the rig automatically, are all done in a very specific way for a reason. It sounds like i’m being a bit high minded but that’s not the intention, what i’m trying to get across is that through time on the bank or what some might call ‘practice.’ I’ve finally got the rig exactly how I want it, so that it’s at it’s most effective for the fishing i’m doing at the time.
To go a little bit more in depth, the hook that i’m using has a very sharp in-turned point and an in-turned eye, I like the in-turned point because as soon as the point pricks the carps mouth then it pulls into a nice little lump of flesh and the hookhold is secure, admittedly the in-turned point may not prick as many fish as a straight point hook but will probably result in more secure hookholds. Furthermore I like the hook to have an in-turned eye so that when you put the shrink tubing over it, it’s already pointing in the right direction for the ‘cranked over’ effect. Incidentally , I prefer to use a nice little section of shrink tube just over 1cm long rather than a long length as I find this does the job quite adequately for my fishing. Another thing that is critical is the size and position of the tubing on the bend of the hook. I use either fox 0.5mm silicone tubing which is very resilient being quite thick walled and not liable to split or the excellent Atomic rock bottom pvc tubing. Both of these hold the hair perfectly in position as it leaves the hooks bend and are not liable to move although admittedly the atomic stuff is better for a longer cast. Again you don’t want to use too long a section, 2mm is more than adequate to do the job. The distance of the hair between leaving the hook and the bottom of the bait is also critical, I tend to use roughly 1 cm as a rule of thumb, which allows enough give for the hook to flip over and do its job.
Another thing that I find critical is the distance of the uncoated braid between where it
leaves the shrink tube and the coated section, usually I leave about 1-1.5cm, just enough to allow movement in the mouth and let the hook flip over and do its job. More often than not I tie the hook on no knot fashion which allows me to gauge this length correctly. I have used longer uncoated sections in the past but finally settled on what i’ve just described because i’ve found it to be the most efficient.
To lead on from this I usually use a hooklink of about 7-8 in as I find this more than adequate for the type of fishing i do, although saying that sometimes i go longer and sometimes shorter depending on the type of water or the type of bottom that i’m fishing on. So as you can see, something like the ‘standard’ bottom bait rig is in fact something that’s quite intricate and has to be fished in a particular way to gain the maximum effect from it.
Another example is the ‘wafter’ or ‘KD’ rig. The way i’d usually fish this on a water like Sandhurst nowadays is with a sz 9 ESP barbel hook which has a deadly sharp straight point and a slightly in-turned eye, i prefer the straight point for this type of rig purely because this rig is all about separation and pricking power when fished in conjunction with a balanced bait, be it a maize stacker rig, snowman or balanced boilie. Once again i’d usually use 15lb jel e wire for this rig or even go down to 10lb Sufix camfusion in the winter. Again, it’s a simple enough rig when given a cursory glance but certain things are of paramount importance. With this set up i’d usually whip 2x turns up the shank, trap the hair back and then whip up a further 5x then pull the tag end back through the eye, perfect for this hook which has a reasonably short shank. Now if you were using something like a sz 10 mugga which has a longer shank, if you did the above the hook would stick out at an awkward angle which in my mind is not as effective. So therefore with this hook you have to whip around 10x up the shank, trap the hair back and then whip up a further 2 or 3 times before pulling the tag end back through and creating a nice balanced set up. Again with this rig the distance between where the hair leaves the shank and the top of the bait is critical. I tend to use a general rule of thumb which is, having the bait level with where the shank turns into the bend although friends have used it longer to good effect.
Sometimes you may find that the hair wraps around the shank on a cast rendering the rig pretty much ineffective. One way of remedying the situation is to either fish it with a mini stick of really fine crumb slid down the hooklink which holds everything together nicely or alternatively an enterprise magaligner grub slid down the hair before you mount the bait to create a stiff section which will not wrap around and tangle.
So now you can see why my mate left my house screaming ’information overload’. To be honest i’ve boggled my mind just writing about it!!! He’d gone from those golden days of blunt hooks and simplicity to a time where everything is available and then some. Obviously the term ‘keep it simple’ still applies but fine tuning of those principles is key to getting the best out of some rigs.
Tight lines and bulging nets to you all
Jamie