moorsey

Carp see in a much wider colour spectrum than we do and it includes the infa-red and ultra-violet features so none of us can be absolutely sure just how much they can actually see in any conditions.

You need to make sure that you start the whipping of the knot away from the cut side of the eye and an out-turned eye [like the stiff rigger] will also help.

It depends on how long you intend to stay for. If you plan to do a few days then prebaiting certainly pays off and the more you can put in the better.

Come on fellas. When I lived in the UK it used to take me 45 mins to get to the stretch of the Thames that I fished and it was worth the 2 hour plus round trip twice a week to bait up. If you want to catch river carp it all adds up to how much you want to catch them.

I'm guessing that you could be using small hooks [10's or smaller]. Because the hooks are so light they tend to get sucked further back into the carp's mouth. 8's or bigger may be the solution.

With surface fishing you tend to be striking at the visible take. With a bait on the lake bed you are relying on the rig doing some of the work for you.

Just plain lucky I guess

Yep.

Good post Nick but if you watch and study how carp feed you will find that the early assumptions about how the bait is blown out were somewhat flawed. The carp sucks in all sorts of rubbish while it is feeding and then uses "the curtain" to help it sort out the junk from the food. The food should get stuck behind the curtain and the heavier bits of rubbish get blown out below the curtain.[if you get a chance to watch tank fish they look as if they are chewing] In short the carp would be unlikely to be trying to blow out the boilie as this would be recognised as a food item but it would be trying to hold the boilie and blow out the hook. Keith

Indeed it was. I was lucky enough to be shown it before KM publicised it and if I hadn't seen it in use I would have considered it a practical joke.

I have used the same rig for several years and it has worked well for me in English gravel pits and the Thames as well as French lakes and the river Saone. The most important thing is to put that rig in the right spot.

Not on my lake it's not.

couldnt agree more!! Same here, but it's difficult to educate people when you have Jim Shelley advocating using 30 feet of the stuff. Slowly but surely the angling world is realising the dangers of leadcore. Our best hope is that more fisheries ban it. Well said stoogi. The worst thing I ever did was inventing a knot for the stuff and the best thing I ever did was banning it on my lake. At least some of us are learning.

Why does it always seem to be me that has to ask? Why do you want to use lead core? How do you see it benefitting your fishing?

Sorry I can't leave it at that because you don't seem to realise the extra danger that you are putting the carp under by using any kind of leader. With any leader you have the knot joining it to the mainline as the weakest point so any snap off [casting, during the fight or pulling for a break] will potentially leave a fish towing a length of very strong line. As that leader is designed to be heavy and sink it is likely to get caught up in roots or snags and could then tether the carp to a section of line which it will not be able to break and the best it can hope for is to rip its mouth open in order to escape or die. There have been several published accounts of fish being severely damaged or killed because of leaders.

I'm afraid you've got it completely wrong fella. The wording of "safe zone" was to produce an area around the bait that the fish considered safe it does nothing to reduce damage to the fish during the fight. In fact, by moving the weak point [first knot] further up the line you are creating a rig which is more likely to harm the carp after any kind of snap off. We have banned leader here for several years now and our carp are all in mint condition and even the fifty plus common doesn't have a single scale out of place. The only part of your posts that I would agree with is that you should use tubing with braided main line.

Let me know where you're fishing and I'll drive over and tie some rigs and cast them out for you.

Combi with a very short hinge section tied in very supple material.

Sorry to jump in here late but none of the leaders [leadcore nor safe zone] follow the lake bed as the sales blurb suggests. They are simply not heavy enough and are too stiff. The other misleading thing is the name. "Safezone" is named as it was suggested that it makes an area close to the bait which appears safe to the fish. It doesn't mean that it protects the fish by making the rig safe.

Funnily enough Nick I think it may even relate to our background. Originally being from a background as an engineering draughtsman I tend to think about the mechanics of each rig.