bass

Most lines that sink will work their way into the softer top layers of silt, weed or whatever chod you are fishing over and the pop up will look to a carp from above as if it is sitting onto of the silt ect. Use a light lead and it will not sink into the silt too much. My point is the chod hooklink length needs to varied on how deep you want it off the bottom, the length from the rig to the lead is set a over the silt depth as not to drag it into the bottom as the lead lands

I have found that 1 to 3 inches works well depending on the type of bottom I am fishing on, the deeper the silt, the longer the chod, also if you are not using leadcore have a look at the new avid chod beads, great product.

Like carpquarry says if the fish are new from a farm they will have been feed small pellets so that will be a good start. I fish a new lake in England myself were the carp came from a fish farm and although the fish eat normal 14 to 15mm boilies I found they would go mental on a mix of 10mm pellets , boilie chops and double 10mm dark fishmeal boilies on the hair.

No rig is 100% safe as even a short length of trailing line may become snagged at some stage, float stops, beads and tubing all become much harder to slide off a line when clogged with weed or bottom debris. Why don’t tackle companies start to work on rust out hooks like the South African shark hooks that break down in water after a week or less, I know the saltwater help but things rust in fresh water quickly too. We are all told to change hooks regularly so they are a cheap throw away item anyway.

Small pieces of black rig foam trimmed down to the shape of a chum mixer and fished on a short hair, soak it if you like but it works fine on its own. Chod style or straight eyed hooks are better with double strength hooklink . Have a look at the Korda thinking tackle series 1 DVD to see Terry Hearn’s piece on zig rig fishing, his hair system is great and has improved my zig rig and floater fishing catch rate loads. Yours Rich

I have used both fangs and raptors but find the raptors to be the sharpest by far. Used the korda wides a year back and had problems with them opening up on bigger fish. Back to the fang, the new packet ones seem to be very thick in the wire for their size and have bigger than normal eyes.