Good end tackle get the results.. |
Some might say that I’m a freak in my carp fishing, because of the attention I spend on my rigs being perfectly in order. The reason I do this is confidence. There is nothing more annoying for a carp angler than to be in doubt if your bait is or isn’t presented in perfect way…Because I leave for France on the 4th May I’ve been tying up all kinds of different rigs in my spare time for the last 2 weeks I leave nothing to coincidence once on the bank.
Although I prepare all kinds of rigs, I try to keep them as simple as possible, and only when I would get takes without catching any fish I will change to more versatile ones.
In this article I want to give a view on what materials and rigs I use. To my knowledge there is no secret rig that catches all the carp, but creating the perfect circumstances to present your hook bait will make a big difference |
HOOKLINK material:
For most of my fishing I use PB Jelly Wire, 15 lb that is a clear coated hook link material.
It lies flat on the lake bed, is strong as an ox, has a low diameter, and is very easy to strip of its coating. I use this for both my bottom baits and pop-up rigs. For pop up rigs I have about two centimetres of stripped off coating behind my hook, on which I put a shot. These 2 centimetres will enhance the turning of the hook, resulting in more efficient takes.
The Korda Xtra soft intelligent link is one of my other favourites, perfect for stiff or combi rigs, but I tend to only use this for my bottom rigs. It almost completely invisible once in the water and it gives me a lot of confidence that it doesn’t scare off the wary Belgium or French carp. For the hair I simply thread the link back through the eye of the hook after putting a ring on it. I blob the end with a lighter to settle everything. I’m not too good with bait floss so I use small rubber bands with a bait stops to put on my boilies. |
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On my first experimenting trip of the year I tried hook links combined with Triggalink. This braid reduces in length by a third once in water. This gives the fish some movement in the rig, and I believe this makes the bait behave more natural which gives wary carp more confidence that the bait is harmless to eat, resulting into more takes. Triggalink combined with both stiff rig or coated link works great.
I caught 23 carp on the new Carp Classic Red Salmon and Lobster boilies with these three links. 20 out of the 23 carp came from combined hook links with Trigga rig. This will definitely go with me to France. About the boilies they look bright red and smell great. On a one day session I caught 11 fish instantly with no drop offs. It was nice to know that my neighbour fishermen only caught about 4 fish each and lost a few. |
HOOKS:
In most simple conditions I use normal wide gap hooks, such as the Korda ones, but on waters with a lot of conditioning I switch over to long shanked or semi-long shanked ones. To my belief wide gap hooks have a better grip, but are easier to blow out then the long shanked hook. The safety of the carp is more important than the catch, so I only use barbless hooks; it causes less damage, and just imagines what carp mouths would look like if everybody used only barbless hooks. |
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As I said Korda wide gap is the basic hook I use, it’s got a Teflon coating so it blends in easier on the lakebed. Size 6 is my favourite since I prefer to fish 15 mm boilies most of the time. I never go with smaller hooks than size 8 because too small hooks can cause bad damage to carps mouths. |
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| The Kensaki hooks are strong as hell, very sharp, and I have a lot of confidence in them, they are a bit smaller than the Korda ones, they have a little more reflection though, but it doesn’t seem to mess with my catch rate. And as a bonus, they are not that expensive!!! I tend to use these when fishing with very small boilies or with plastic corn, but for these hooks, never smaller than size 8. |
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| For my semi-long shanked hooks I use Gardner Incizor hooks, sharp as a raiser, and very strong, I use these for both pop-up and bottom baits rigs. |
Other rig components:
I already said that I find it very important that my rigs lie flat on the bed, I also want my rigs to be easy to change and have a certain mobility to enable the carp to suck in the bait without getting spooked and to avoid tangles; To get to this point there are a few rig components that I always use when making my rigs: |
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Anti tangle sleeves
Quick chance links
Tungsten putty
Shrink tube
Ring Swivels |
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I recently bought a crafty tool to help me with steaming my shrink tube, a cone on which I can bend my shrink tubing to the degree I like without getting burned and Korda’s pulla-hook to tighten all of my knots….
My experience in tying up my rigs comes from a combination of reading magazines, talking to other fishermen, but most important from trial and error. I can only advise you to try different rigs, if one works well keep it, experiment with your second or third rod so your fishing keeps evolving, and you will see how the results will come along. |
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Pin everything down on the lakebed:
I don’t exaggerate when I say that for all of my fishing I use Kamo leaders. It’s absolutely important to pin my whole rig presentation flat down on the lake bed. Very easy to tie up, the integrated tungsten makes everything sink down flat, and prevents tangles. You can use them both for semi-fixed, running, or chokka presentations, depending on the conditions you fish in. I’m very fond of the running lead presentation, on which I have great results on the lakes I fish on. |
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The chokka rig is my favourite presentation, I remove the inside tubing from an inline lead, to make it able to slide up and down the leader. On the tungsten part of the leader I thread a rubber bead. The carp can swim off with my hook bait without feeling any resistance, but after about 7 inches it will hook itself on the wait of the lead yanking against the bead. In case of losing a carp the bead will remove very easily so a very safe presentation for Mr Carp as well which also is important to all rig you design and use. |
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Here are my completed rigs. In the last two weeks I fish all of these rigs and caught 23 carp all safely landed. The bait I was testing was Red Salmon & Lobster. It smells great and I am very impressed with the results that too is coming to France with me. |
" On the bank my rod set up looks like this." |
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My biggest carp this year is 16kg 35.2lbs caught on the new RSL with my confident rig setup and proven bait.
Now I’m ready and prepared for our first trip of the year to France.... |
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| Patrick Bammens. |
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