beanz

jules..that little pool is available to night fish...it involves a separate ticket and pre booking....and a long drive

i use running for nearly all my carping,with a slackish line, i havent had a twitchy take ever that i can recall,(from carp..plenty of bream)all my takes are screamers. weed i like inline as it more stream lined and collect less. for extra distance i will use heli set ups( but it rare )or if needing a leader. and i dont use bolt set ups..just a personal thing, as iv never felt i needed to use the lead to hook'em. i dont think the lead set up plays a big part unlike location and bait for most situations.

a bag will add weight , so your balanced rig wouldnt fall as you want,but will still have the effect of flying up more freely when taken. the fake bait should mean if the crays turn up your still angling, i say should cause you never know with hemp they can become preoccupied on it so like i said...if their mouth is down on the bottom you dont want your bait higher. and as for the KD ,, im not the guy to ask i believe the way its tied has nothing thing to do with it hooking potential and its the fact that the hair when blown pulls at the eye and not bend. a standard knotless knot with 3-4 turns is exactly the same in my mind

any pop up rig fished over a tight baited spot runs the risk of foul hooking. when feeding on hemp the carp dont have to move far to keep feeding and they can keep their head down, where a spread of boilies over a large area gets them moving and also dropping the head down for each individual bait. in your situation,where i could see the bottom i would use a bottom bait with a small mesh/bag just to protect the hook. once the fish have cleared the weed id be happy to just flick out the hook bare.or if i didnt want any free offerings id balance the bait to slowly fall and settle on the weed.

are you not using a top bead then???

im unsure what you mean by "if the fish picks up the bait and swims away from me the weight of the lead will have no hooking affect at all" as it would be in the silt, so even a light lead will have a bolt effect.

ready mades are good for a quick cheap fix,but long term you risk missing chances because the individual small 1%s that all add become second to the convenience of the old ready tied you have. where length of rig or hair could play a great part in hook ups or even how sharp the hook is,,out the packet sharp isnt sharper enough for many anglers but when you only have a few readies and no way on the bank to replace the patterns you feel needed, your maybe using a inferior rigs and who wants that playing with there confidence???? lardy- where d'you shop it'd be a tenner at least for a coated braid in my local tackle shop

sometimes a bait just off the bottom is what they want...its a debate for another thread on what depth a pop up becomes a zig but it works! i think the chods "better hook ratio" is because it increases your hook size, shank length and gape. and with the stiffness should never be able to flip out backwards as often like is possible with limp links leaving the eye and lesser but still poss with a kicker or aligner. the thing i dont like is having the lead snag while playing the fish in situations where other lead set ups other then the heli wouldnt of snagged. happened twice using chods, both close in. lost one in reed roots in margin and got the other after the lead sat in a fork of underwater branch..to short from rig to lead and you risk harm or hook pull as lead bounces around the lips. im not decided on the best distance yet......so as a side question...whats a good length from lead to bottom bead??

when you say 'fluoro' do you mean boilie colour or line??? as it looks like a mono hook link to me :?which if so wouldnt take on the curve associated with the chod,though will still work,like a zig. and if the main line isnt heavy or fluorocarbon you will need to counter the buoyancy with some putty or shot. but saying that iv not seen a swivel like that and it may have enough weight one thing is... it looks like the line passes through the opposite way to how i would prefer if it was me. ....it may not its hard to be sure in the pic

nick, do you think, (or anyone else), think that the ring may not play as much as a part in the mechanics with a long hair compared to a short hair, i can see the movement of the ring being necessary on short almost shanked baits...but not so sure on longer( i know a bait is missing ) just a general question

hey phil..are you on about the rotary pit across the road oppersite the marina?? i heard that they are banning nights over there.

i havent seen that.but talking of hitting the clip............ i did see an interesting vid with a diver and a lad casting to his spot, it was an eye opener he clipped and recast and was well off, i think he pulled line off about 10 times in the end, so thats about 20-30 foot off before it went back bang on the money... if you clip up a few times over a sess on 1 spot ...you could end up miles off. i just remember for the like off me where i see it

Ripslider! ...a blast from the past spatch- there are a few things that can effect how close the baits sit to the lead...a coated braid can help and obviously stiff links, and the old skool drag back....but feeling the lead down can make more of a difference , this will make the lead drop in an arch ( the depth and distance cast will effect the radius of this "arch" though ) the bait follows the lead down but the water is pushing the bait away, as its being dragged down, and towards you, and its that friction against the water(as it comes towards you) that pushes the bait in the other direction(away from the lead)bait size effects this obviously, a bigger surface area will create more fiction. i always feel the lead down, for the reason above and for the feel. id worry if i just let it fall, if there's a the slightest tow i feel the bait could fall on the mainline side and risk tangling....thats with any hooklink material

Meant N Trap.

mouth trap is a stiff material isnt it??? ..i thought it was kordas answer to esps stiff rig bristle filament

i dont disagree though i would say that if they feel it on their lips,the hook is in their mouth .......so its too late

top tip kev occasionally ,when i remember i would pinch it onto the bunched up coating.

i think when using a stiff hinge/chod or withy/claw type rig, a bait close to the shank may work better because of its stiffness and the anti-eject properties. a simple rig though and i believe now that distance is necessary. heres a pic of my simple rig, i can use it for bottoms or pop-ups just by adding or removing the shot. i only came about using this as the coots wouldnt leave me alone for the first few sessions, so from fear of hooking them i lengthened the hair as i started of with one bait close to the hook....when i finally found the fish, it worked a treat.

does to me john

the angle of the point ... this im guessing shows to be more aggressive when holding the bait above the hook by hand,and out of water???? is it the same when being ejected by a fish????

please dont take this the wrong way......but id argue that with that many turns it has exactly the same mechanics as a knotless knot, the two extra turns are meaningless

blatant?? you talking hi vis?? if just baiting with boilies, and not a tight patch, with a pop up of the same mix, the carp will be above it,as it has to move, so at most the hook bait will look slightly bigger than the freebies if all the same size....so it goes down and its in before it expects it......i never used to have faith in pop ups but over the last few season i recon iv upped my catch rate after using them more frequently...the extra confidence knowing that a fish can move my rig and my hook isnt masked in bottom debris is defiantly a bonus.

so what do you think separates a bottom or a pop up...why a long hair on one but not the other???? whats your thinking gary???

im not sure about the direction playing a part but then i use runners and a enough slack to give the movement needed. when not being able to see the fish take my bait i base my thinking on them getting hooked by them ejecting the rig( my leads are just casting weights) i had 7 out of the 9 in a small lake in 3 months back in spring using mainly pop-ups and 2 on bottoms but the rigs all had long hairs....i think a long hair allows the bait the travel out the way of the jet flow as they blow out meaning less pressure on the bait compared to being in the mouth or on the lips, this i think allows the weight of the point to turn and drop more freely meaning direction they take from doesnt matter. the only false beep i had over that time was a liner, which had me believe was a run until i tighten up and see the line was taken right in front of me in my deep margin...i kicked my self for not having a rig there lol

It's also to do with that fact that when fishing a critically balanced bait, you're taking the weight away from the shank/eye of the hook and making the point the heaviest part - which as you say makes the point naturally point downwards. It's a rig that looks odd out of the water, but when you get how it works, is pretty clever wouldnt just 2-3 turns on kk be the same...im yet to understand what the extra turns after the hair do???