Personally I think for most fishing a simple knotless knot with a line aligner of silicon or shrink tubing and a decent hair is the best presentation going.
I rarely worry about Chod rigs, and I definitely DO NOT use them anywhere near weed; they can give delayed or even no indication, something I have personally experienced, leading to lost fish, which when fishing for fish over 30lb is not something I care to be doing.
Bomb on the end of the line set-ups, commonly known as helicopter or chod rigs most definitely can lead to fish making it away to snags with just one or two bleeps, over 30metres away from where they picked the bait up when fishing at 100metres.
A knotless knot is simple to tie, and I pull mine tight with they finger hole on my forceps, putting the hook on it and pulling the hooklink tight. I use that rig for bottom baits, and snowman baits. If I want to have a proper hair with a snowman bait, I put a bottom bait on the hair, and tie a pop-up to the end of the loop. It sounds more complicated than it is.
I do sometimes tie the hook on, and have a sliding ring on the shank, with movement limited by a hook stop. To this sliding ring I tie a hair with whatever bait I want, double bottom baits, snowman or even a pop-up.
If I fish a pop-up specifically, I normally go to a D-rig with a ring on the D to tie my pop-up to.
Hooklink material: in weed I normally use braid, fished inline with a 'zipp' shaped lead. I rarely get fish caught up in the weed, it slides over the lead. I do NOT use lead clips at all.
I've fished for big fish, over 30lb, and all my 20's and 30's have come on fairly simple rigs. More anglers are caught by rig fashion than fish!
My personal best fish (a river carp, over 28lb, NOT my largest fish), was caught on two 18mm boilies on the hair, on a braid line aligned knotless knot rig.
My largest fish over 30lb (and other 30's) were caught on that sliding ring on the hookshank. I was tying the hair length to suit snowman baits.
I am sure that there are pictures of my rigs around the forum, definitely in rig sectionπ
Rig fashion is dictated by tackle companies and media to convince you to spend money.
As for hooks, I found Korda awful. They would not hold their point, were blunt from the pack, and the Kamakura (?) was an attempt to change this. I have pictures of me lifting a size 6 on the ball of my finger or thumb with a 3oz lead attached, lifted off the desk, it did not penetrate.
A mate and I fish together, I borrowed one of his rigs, tied exactly the same as mine. I was getting bleeps, but no runs. I put my tied rig on the spot, within minutes a hooked fish.The hook he had tied with was a Korda Kurv, mine was a Gardner Mugga. I do not think it a coincidence that a rig cast to exactly the same spot with a brand I knew (and trust) caught me fish.
I only trust a few brands as being sharp enough out the pack; Gamakatsu, Gardner, Solar 101's, Kamasan B175's or the ESP. ESP Cryogens are supposedly even better than the older T-4 and G4 patterns I used.