zander1

Your question is a bit vague mate. What properties are you looking for? What is it you think the best coated braid offers?

Personally, the hook and hook link material dictate wether I need to use shrink tubing.

Good hooks- £1 toooo expensive for me tho I got them out of the bargain bucket of my local tackle shop...£1 a pack Result. Quality! another good reason to use big hooks

I agree Cobleyn. Problem is there are just so many variables; nothing can really be right or wrong everywhere 100% time. How often do you take what the mags say as gospel anyway??? I bet the mags do subliminally affect your fishing though

Good hooks- £1 toooo expensive for me tho

agreed

Get a feel for the lake bed by leading about or by using a marker mate. You could find more weed and silt than there is gravel- you never know If the water is gin clear and im fishing over gravel I tend to tie a fluro combi rig up with a beaked point hook, but tbh im using coated braids for pretty much all my fishing again now. One less knot in the setup is better than absolute invisibility in my eyes just as long as its all pinned down nicely. Of late ive been using suffix camfusion pretty much everywhere as im that confident with the stuff. people get put off by how dark it looks but don’t be, it blends in pretty much everywhere. Obviously its perfect in the silty areas but it doesn’t look half bad on clay or gravel. It often blends in better than my "gravel brown" hooklinks Have a look at the suffix camfusion, sheath skin or heavy skin mate. Very reliable and won’t break the bank Hope I could help mate

Other than recently using the chod, ive pretty much used the same 3 rigs for the last few years. Rigs very similar to what you see they guy in the mags and the guy in the next peg using. Obviously there are a few subtle changes but in general I use long curved shank hooks for my snow man presentations, curved (long and short shank) hooks for my pop-ups, and a wide gape type pattern for my standard bottom bait rig preferring to use a straight point rather than beaked point where I can I also tend to stick to size 6 in all patterns generally

Theres a few people that say you cant due to fish saftey.

If you use a semifixed back stop you can use pva sticks on your hooklink, feed the rig through the stick like normal. I just use a peice of rig tubing slid through the back bead. However, If you give it the big'un on the cast it will move your back stop.

No reason why it shouldn't work at all Lead in PVA bag full of crumb, pellets chopped and whole boilies with hook nicked into bag used to work a treat for me. I even used stringers attached to the hook with no problems. Like above, or you can fish pva sticks etc, some ways use semifixed back stops, otherways use a swivel lead fished helicopter style so you can tie pva things on directly under the lead.

That should be simple for you to work out lad, you aint a Noddy

This could be a very interesting Thread, will be good to see what, where, and why people use certain hooks over others in different situations. Im sure there are a lot of "which hook" threads mind, lets hope this is more in sightfull rather than just arguments over brand of hook Lead by example mrdevon

I dont bother doing this anymore, I had a spell on it, tbh I didnt notice a difference in my catch rate? I agree that on the "hand test" it does seem to flip faster, but my rigs still catch hold 99% of the time regardless? Any body else noticed similar results???

Bang on advice from Mr Matt again, that nugget of commonsense is often overlooked.

I’m inclined to agree with you, especially from a neatness point of view. The tidier the rig the more confident I am in it that it will work correctly and will sit nicely. So obviously too large of a loop and it will look gangly and I don’t think it will offer superior movement anyway in my opinion. I don’t however think it is possible to tie to small of a loop though, unless it’s tied that small it grips the swivel?? As a general rule in my head, I like the loop to be the same width as the eye of the swivel (open the loop out with a tension bar) and this dictates the length of the loop as I like it to taper in neatly. All down to personal preference and probably doesn’t affect a thing, but as always, it’s a confidence thing Anyway moving on, after thinking over and over about the fish that I dropped last session (I think that that is the second fish i've lost since using tubing) I decided I had to get the rod out and check the rig. Doing so, I noticed that the tubing i had used by the helicopter sleeve was damaged/torn. At first I thought it was the swivel rubbing on it but after playing around with it I realised that it was the swivel, but not in this way. What I believe it was was the swivel not passing over the tubing easily in the fight instead sitting on top of the tubing. So the tubing was acting like a shoulder and the tension of the fish at one end and me at the other was causing the tubing to crumple before the swivel was moving over it, (probably damaged landing the previous fish) thus tearing the tubing under pressure and not really helping prevent line damage and creating an obstacle to detrimentally affect the efficiency of landing the fish. Can you see what I’m getting at here, at the point where the swivel goes from being shouldered to popping over the tubing it creates a split second free of resistance between me, the hook and the fish giving the hook chance to fall out (being barbless on this one occasion) or pulled out when the tension is restored (that’s how I see it affecting a barbed hook?) To avoid this shoulder like property I have decided to play around with a small length of tubing running up and down the line with the swivel. The Korda sinker acts as a back stop so that the rig doesn’t come flying all the way back to my rod tip. I’m hoping to get out tomorrow to test this, it will obviously need refining but I am pretty sure it will work better. What do you guys think????? Am I talking absolute rubbish or I have I got something here??? Is what I think is happening, actually happening???

No way, Korda rubbish, E-S-P is da best!

Hi mate, as Matt says cutting the tag end to an angle/point first definitely helps. I use 15lb Fox rigidity and arma point hooks ranging from size 8 through 7, 6 and 4. Generally I prefer to use size 6 with baits between 14-18mm. The bait in this picture is slightly smaller than 18mm as I picked one of the smaller pop-ups out of the tub.

I use the figure of 8 loop knot. Quite tricky to do in a small loop with the stiff material but I find it better than a grinner or blood knot. It means that the rig always has the best chance of sitting right. I prefer a fig of 8 as well tbh, I don’t trust standard overhand knots at all, I used to use them before I had been shown the fig of 8 many years ago and I lost a few fish when lifting into them. I think the stress of opposing forces applied to the knot caused it to snap very easily (if you know what I mean:S )???? granted I was using pre-stretched 10lb mono hook links so the knot strength would never have been brilliant in conjunction with bold rigs and some cheap tow rope on the reel Anyway moving on to the point I want to get too . It seems that the majority of us that have thought about this rig and developed it in some way favour a loop knot attaching the bristle filament to the flexi-ring swivel. What I would find interesting to know is whether you prefer a small a loop as possible or as big a loop as possible etc and why??? Is it possible that as long as there is a loop it doesn’t mater what size it is, it will still work the same??? I have a few schools of thought on this myself but I cannot prove or disprove any of them, yet my mind prefers one way over the others. Your thoughts lads???

Great pics Nige! Cracking addition to this thread. I too decided to use a section of tubing and korda sinkers after re-thinking my set up and after reading posts from yourself and Jez. Also saves me the bother of having to upload more pictures I have however noticed (yesterday after landing and then loosing a fish later in the day) that the Korda sinkers are prone to parting more than the Drennan float stops, but there added weight and subtlety more than make up for this. I put loosing the fish down to using a barbless hook with a rig where the rig can move around a lot in relation to the lead, I will be sticking with barbed hooks again on the chod where I can. I can only hope that more people follow your example Nige and add constructively to this thread

Maybe Hoodlum, why do you want to use a lead clip anyway???

It doesnt look like the swivel is pulled into the lead clip properly to me, maybe the swivel is too big?

Found it http://www.carp.com/carp-forum/viewtopic.php?t=22185

There had used to be one :/

Hey, just wondered if anyone has ever suffered from the hook link shearing through the mainline/leader when landing a fish??? If so how did you overcome this?? I haven’t suffered from this myself yet (probably because I haven’t used the set-up over a prolonged period and have a tendency to tie up new rigs on a regular basis) but I have heard others have?? (I noticed some damage to my leader last session as I was packing up so I need to check that later, but midway up the leader, possibly caused by some kind of underwater obstacle). Because of this I’m thinking of dropping down slightly from 25-26lb to 23lb for my fluro leaders as I think the slight reduction in thickness will aid my casting and concealment. I know it is only a slight difference but I am worried I will suffer a shearing effect more easily from the reduction in diameter????