This is indeed a fascinating thread.
I ask you all to think of one question. Here it is -.....
How would carp magazines survive, if issue one showed you all the rigs you would need to catch all the carp you would ever want to catch?
Let's face it, if you get carp feeding confidently enough, there is no need for an overcomplicated rig - unless the lake conditions (for instance heavy weed or some other hindrance) renders your normal "simple" rig unuseable.
Carp magazines love to try and tell us all (and in particular, poor beginners, who's heads must spin at the vast array of rigs and bits and bobs that they are told they "need to catch") that we need the latest wonder rig.
Of course we don't!!!
We just THINK we do. And its that "I wonder" bit of the human mind that makes us tinker around. Carp fishermen, by and large, are great tinkerers with things!!!
Some of the rigs I have seen in print (including in some otherwise good books, for instance the Korda Rig Book has some fascinating stuff in it about the effect your lead has on hooking efficiency and other gems) are just laughable, full stop. I can imagine Mr Carp getting caught on them purely because he's too busy chuckling at the mangled mess of steel and braid that's sitting on his dining table that he falls and impales himself.
Read Terry Hearn's book "In pursuit of the largest". I did. I flicked eagerly to the rigs section , expecting to see twenty or so wonder rigs. Nope. Just a handful.
End of!
Keep it simple, and learn watercraft and baiting strategy, and leave complicated rig construction to people with far too much time on their hands.
Matty
