NorthWestCarpCatcher

Exactly my thinking mate. Or experiment and use heavier leads and see how that affects your hook holds. If you've caught a few already that is.

I too fish a lake with a very silty/sandy soft bottom. When you watch the fish close in you can see the bottom pluming up just off their tale movements. I use a 2oz lead on helicopter set up utilising leadcore leaders. I have my top bead set to around 3 feet though. The leads plug so much so that you can't really pull back, I use this to my advantage though as I feel it only helps to drive the hook home further on the take. I use a stiff coated braid as the hooklink and a balanced wafter as the bait so that when the leader settles on the bottom the hooklink finds its natural position on the leader and kicks away without being submerged into the silt, a small pva mesh bag of around 5 crushed boilies also protects the hook point. And I have to say it's worked so far, I'm getting no funny indications and every fish I've caught is absolutely nailed bottom lip. My concern is if the rig is picked up and ejected and this soft bottom is pluming up so much that then a chance of another bite may have gone, as the rig has the potential to be submerged into the silt. So I tend to recast atleast once more that day for the night if I haven't had any action. I also tend to use boilies and tigers as feed as I feel like smaller particles will just be engulfed by the bottom with any disturbance in the area, bigger baits have more of a chance of staying above the sediment. It certainly took a while to get used too after fishing weedy gravel pits. Not a spot of weed in this lake though, which is nice.