Carting Gear

It still makes me giggle when I see guys turning up for few hours on the bank with a barrow load of gear, they don't even walk to the far end of the lake but proceed to park themselves at the first swim they get to, do they really need that much gear for a day session?

I'm going to put my hand up here as I've been there and done that so I am guilty of over doing things when it came to tackle on the bank so it must be a learning curve that all Carp anglers go through. It got so bad at one point I had some problems with a trapped nerve in my shoulder which I think was caused by carrying way too much gear. Gone are those days, the trolley I used to use to lug the gear around is at the mother in laws rusting away in the corner of the garden after being sacked from its fishing duties, my ruck sack is a much more manageable size and my old rod holdall, in a rather fetching 'realtree' pattern that was capable of carrying six, yes six rods, is in the attic, no longer being used and for sale if anyone wants it?

 

I used to carry everything just in case it was needed but long gone are those days, I don't even bother with a marker and spod setup anymore. If I want to look for a new spot I do this on a separate trip and try and find the same spots from different swims keeping my options open for when I fish the lake. Watercraft can give away spots that are far more productive than ones that are bombarded with kilo's of 'Munga' and been able to up sticks and move onto showing fish can put a Carp on the bank much quicker that sitting it out in one swim because the weeks budget of boilies were piled in onto the one spot.

 

Cutting all my gear down to the essentials and being able to move quickly is really important to me now as it helped me to put my personal best Carp on the bank, if I'd had a barrow load of gear with me that day I wouldn't have moved swims as quick as I did and caught 'Roxy' within a few minutes of doing so.

When I'm on the move I use my pod to carry both rods and net, I have a bag on my back that carries everything I need and I carry my bait bucket, mat and chair in my free hand, sometimes I don't even bother with a chair, I sit on the bucket or the mat.

 

In the bag, all the terminal gear has been cut down to the bare minimum and I only add something to the set-up if I didn't take it with me and it cost me a fish. All my rigs and hooklinks are pre-tied at home, ready to go and when I think about the rigs I use there are only a few of them I use to cover all my Carp fishing.

 

Chod rig, I carry a few leaders ready to go and a box containing the 'choddy' hooklinks.

 

Standard clip rigs, I've been tying the same bottom bait hooklinks for this setup for years, why use anything else if it works? I will give something new a go but it's usually only on the second rod and if it doesn't work, it's out.

 

Method feeder, I love using them, my favourite method leaders are set up ready to go, hooklinks are the same bottom bait ones as above or choddys!

 

Zig rig, as above but with a longer hooklink tied to the depth I need when I see the fish cruising around.

 

Floater setup, I carry a controller in the bag and use the same line and hooks as I use for zig rigs.

 

Bait is the one thing I take plenty of, but never too much. I've been caught out once when I was having one of those magic days with runs galore then I ran out of the stuff. There's always enough dry stuff in the bag to keep the method busy for a day session, being dry it doesn't weigh too much, the same mix is used for sticks and ground baiting. I always have enough boilies for the session and never go without a selection of coloured pop-ups which are all one flavour to get around having that every colour in every flavour, 'just in case' mindset!

 

Give it a go, lay out all the gear you took on your last trip, move all the things you actually used on the last session to one side and look at the stuff you didn't use, do you need all that?

Chod Talk - Part 2

Something I'm having a play around with is separating the lead and hook link on my chod rigs. After a take the hooklinks always slide down to the buffer sleeve pushed over the lead link and I've always thought this was the cause of dropped fish shortly after a take on a choddy. With the lead hanging so close to the Carps mouth it gives ample leverage and weight for the hook to be thrown by a good head shake.

 

What I'm playing with at the moment is extending where the weight sits after a take, it's not an original idea, Jim Shelly uses this method but I'm unsure if it's for the same 'dropped fish' reason. A knot is tied in the lead core about six inches up from the lead, a good tight fitting bead then sits against this knot and stops the hooklink sliding all the way down to the lead.

Chod knotted six inches up from lead.

This separation should relieve some of the leverage created by a fishes head shake and keep the hook in place. (That's the theory anyway!)

 

The one problem I have found is that after a few fish have been caught the tight fitting bead eventually slides over the knot and down to the lead, I've now changed this knot in the leader to a heavy rig ring with no chance of the bead being able to slide over this and so far there's been no problems. Six inches of lead core is used between the rig ring and the lead.

Knot replaced with rig ring.

There is the option to replace this short piece of leadcore with knotted mono and use as a weak link, some good quality PVA string would have to be used to tie the lead to the ring when casting.

Chod Talk - Part 1

Using the loop to loop method of connecting leadcore chod rigs to my main line has served me well for a few years but I have now changed to using the needle knot similar to the old school way fly fishermen attached mono leaders to fly line. The problem I was experiencing with the pre tied and looped leaders was that beads were not freeing themselves from the leader easily they kept getting caught on the thicker section where the loop is formed in the braid. (Not safe for the fish)

 

A few years ago, it was fashionable to pierce the rubber beads with a boilie needle and thread them onto the leadcore so they would grip and hold the hooklink in place, this is no longer acceptable so I found another method which I consider to be much safer and allows the beads to slide freely up the leader and over the needle knot with very little pressure. Two pieces of shrink tube are used on the leader to act as points for the beads to grip onto, these pieces of shrinktubing can be slid up and down the leader to vary the position of the bait with ease and only just grip the leadcore leader material I use, this freedom of movement will vary with different thicknesses of leadcore so experimenting with different shrink tubing will bring the desired results.

My preferred chod setup

I have found that the bottom bead tends to slide down to the lead when a fish takes and I tend to leave this in its lower position whilst there is no weed on the lake, later in the year this will be lifted away from the lead to help with presentation in the green stuff. The top bead does occasionally come loose on a very hard cast being pushed up the leader by the drag from the boilie and hooklink. On feathering the cast, the hooklink slides back down to the bottom bead so it's not a problem, leaving the 5mm tag on the needle knot also helps to stop the bead and hooklink travelling off the leader should they come loose. In terms of safety, this tag is not a problem for the beads to travel over should the leader be lost and takes a lot less pressure than freeing a lead from a clip so shouldn't be a problem for a Carp to rid itself of the leader.

 

Tying the needle knot.

With practise, this is a very neat knot to tie and I believe it is also a very strong way of connecting leadcore leaders to mono main line; well I've never had any problems with it!

 

First job is to push some of the leadcore out from the braided sheath and then blob the end of the braid with a lighter, pull a further 3cm of leadcore out of the braid and break off. You should be left with a 3cm section of soft, limp braid without and lead inner core. Next job is to cut the end of your mono main line at an angle using sharp scissors, this pointed end of the main line is then passed up inside the soft section of braid for around 1.5cms before being pushed out through the side of the braid.

Mono pushed through braid ready to knot.

Tying the knot.

The end of the main line is wrapped around the leadcore five times before passing back through the first loop, the twists of mono have to be moistened with saliva before being teased down into a neat bunch of coils and pulled tight, the mono tag end can be cut fairly flush but I like to leave around 5mm sticking out from the leadcore.

Finished knot with 5mm tag.

I also use this same needle knot for attaching all the leadcore leader rigs I use.

Rig up the safe way.

These days, with the amount of freely accessible info on hand to us anglers, there's no excuse for not having a safe rig. Fish safety should come as second nature when tying up any rigs we use after all we don't want to damage, harm or kill the fish we spend so much time and money trying to catch from tying and fishing with what's called a death rig.

so, what is a death rig?

If a rig becomes separated from you the angler through a crack off, a snag or the line parts after a take then there is a chance that this rig can continue to fish and catch.

Once the bait is taken, if a fish cannot separate itself from the lead then there is a chance that the lead could become tangled in a snag or some kind of debris and tethering a fish causing it to struggle, suffer, and eventually die. There is a chance that the fish could throw the hook and weight with a good head shake as we've all been done in this way at some point but should we take that chance? If we care about our quarry then no.

A good quality lead clip will drop a lead easily if set up properly and a helicopter rig when set up correctly should allow the hook link to slide off the leader without much resistance, an in line lead should be able to slide off a leader in the same way and anything fixed between the end of the leader and the mainline is a no no, especially quick change links and swivels, these may aid in a speedy setting up of tackle ready to fish but are not safe to use in this manner. In a similar way anything fixed to the mainline above anti tangle tubing such as a split shot or a twist of lead from leadcore can stop this from sliding free of the mainline.

I love to experiment with rigs and anything new that could give me the edge is always worth a try but the Carps safety has to be put first before the need to try the latest fashion in end gear. Something I always do is test my rigs safety, when was the last time you checked to see if the clip you use drops the lead as easily as it should?