theobeeus

No but please let us know what it's like as I have a feeling it will be better than the handful of high profile carp books I read that I thought were all rubbish and have put me off carp literature quite a bit to be honest

I can sort of see your point, but leadcore doesn't lift scales, and barbless hooks are far more damaging than microbarbed, and carp do not suffocate out of water for a good few hours.. Hopefully most people are are very carefully playing fish, landing them and treating them right o the bank, and weighing, photographing and returning them with less than 3+ hours faffing, and also keeping an eye out for bad anglers, otters, gill nets, long lines, litter and pollution and providing carp with a valuable food source while they're at it. In short, bad fishing is most definitely worse than safER fishing, which is the point of the thread.

Still you would be better off with a proper snag safe bore ring/link than just a swivel hanging on the line. Like I said Enterprise do good ones. Also you would probably like the Angletec system. It is very clever, I bought a whole load of them. I don't use em as I prefer helicopter rigs at the moment, but will I'm sure switch one day: http://www.angletec.co.uk/dynamic-lead-system.html

Enterprise snag safes all the way Cut those horrible lead swivels off with pliers I do it all the time

If you want fully anti tangle mate, ditch the anti tangle sleeve and the massive blob of putty and slide a pva bag down the hooklink with the hook embedded in it, use a wafter instead of a pop up, and while you're at it ditch that horrible curve shank hook because they cause mouth damage

I had dreadful problems with 8lb double strength and found it to be the worst material I have ever used, snapping at a measured 3-4lbs

When was the last time you put a few of your beloved nuggets in a water tank mate? Reeling in to find snotty white residue all over your hookpoint, as well as seeing, every day I went past my tank the same expensive 'premium brand' nuggets floating there after several weeks kinda put me off the things a bit somehow

Onions mate. I have pet onions.

Personally I don't see the point in combi rigs and have tried them many, many times whilst doing far better on pure and semi stiff braids etc, and pure stiff rigs but I still like the idea of a combi and in my opinion the perfect material for it is fluoro I like my .37 Seaguar ace hard stuff a lot, I use it as a leader all the time and it is a lovely material. amazingly the BS is 23lb, and trust me that is a very unusual strength to diameter ratio for fluorocarb, most other readily available fluoros I have come across are horribly thick and ungainly best thing is try a few and dig around. In my opinion if you want a genuine proper combi rig you have to have that stiff section stiff, and while you're on the case, why not make it invisible too? Also be careful about what you are fishing over because if it is even slightly weedy you are going to have your hookbait sticking up at a horrible angle with anything at all other than very supple pure braid mate

I tried making my rigs 'ultra minimal' for a while and ditching all the metal apart from the hook but I ended up getting fed up of tying knots and wasn't happy with the way the rigs were performing.

Dunno but I can only highly reccomend Jim Gibbinson's 'carp sense', other than that I'm afraid I have read quite a good few, I'm not going to name them but I didn't like them. Chilly's book was quite good.

All materials have different knots they prefer, add in different breaking strains and surface textures, and you have a quagmire of confusion right there. Like I said earlier in my thread, I used to test knots until my digitals packed up doing so. The thing to do is test them using your arms. If they go easy, bin em. And like I said, again, perfection loops seemed a lot stronger than simple loops, so again thanks for the input, but the old bonce is sorted now.

Like I said I binned my glued rigs. Ha ha yes it does make me laugh that he says 'don't ever glue rigs', yet they sell a rig glue. For the record I am not one to believe everything some big shot company manager tells me anyway.

I am sticking to the perfection loops now having dismantled all the (lots of em too) superglued overhand loop rigs I tied up (this is with fairly light braid we are talking about) as they are small and neat unlike a figure of 8 I had an overhand loop go on me with one of the braids I use, and the perfection loops seem a lot stronger, so that will do me, thanks for all the replies but I think sometimes things get too confusing cheers

I have posted all the details on here mate just scroll up or down I'm not typing it all out again cos I'm off down the lake, wish me luck (Nash chain reaction on the hair)

And before you say 'I said 4 and that's 3'I already said that solid bags were the best of all tangle free rigs, but I don't use them as I like long hooklinks. So that's 4 reasons not to need those horrible pva nuggets on your hair, fully explained

Anyway now you mention it, perhaps I was being a little bit unneccessarily secretive about my 4 failsafe anti tangle rigs, but there is no rocket science in any of it anyway, all proven methods in wide circulation for a long time now, so here you go: Pva mesh bags get used wrongly in my opinion nicked onto the hook If you thread a neat bag of pellet down the hooklink properly and embed the hook in it, then you have an almost tangle free rig for all those worried about a big bag, start dampening and compressing the pellet more, dampened pellet does not melt PVA! Also, ditch all the anti tangle sleeves, sinkers etc from the rig doing this, all they will do is hinder the threading on of the bag and rip the bag up, just a neat loop and a quick change swivel is all you need.. and to prevent the hooklink bumping off the quick change swivel, and for neatness, just mould putty round it, job dne Groundbait on the hair.. this has been refined by Nash - called chain reactions. People put them on the hooklink, but I use one on the hair = no tangles, also a richworth rig tablet, same thing in a way, a hard, drilled, dissolving anti tangle nugget made of food! Brilliant! Also what about the good old method? I make mine so simple it is unbelievable, look for the right leads: what could possibly be better than a small gripper lead!? Mould groundbait around a very small gripper lead neatly, plug baited hook in, job done. All far superior to pva nuggets, like I said I don't like pva nuggets any more but do still use them to raise zig rigs up and help them stop tangling, and to plug my running lead clips o the cast sometimes. Happy now!?

I did a lot of testing last night mate Yes overhand loops are strong as you say, and were probably more than fine for the mass of rigs I ended up retying, but I did notice a few times, especially with the more supple braids I use, that they kind of strangle the line and break at the knot under a lot of pressure. This pressure was at shark fishing levels as I am a fairly big fella, but nevertheless the overhands were always the ones to go, I didn't try figure of eights which are supposedly a bit stronger than overs, just tried new perfection loops which were way stronger than simple overhand, also tested the good old grinner to swivel which was the same thing, stronger than the overhand loop I shall be using the overhand as a bait stop only from now on.

anyway they are brilliant now. I love learning a superior new not that improves something secific and doesn't strangle material and create potential risks It makes you feel like you are advancing and that all the fretting is worth it in the end for the sake of clarity I now have my rigs right, therefore head right, and can stop buying endless knick knacks and fish with far more confidence and efficiency It is worth fretting as it means you are working things out for yourself Fishing is about developing your own style and being pioneering If you are worried about your rigs not working and tangling it is because they are doing just that I now have 4 brilliant methods of almost completely perfect tangle free rig presentation, all done through a lot of hard work researching, fretting, wasting money, etc. but things can be very enlightening if you have a game plan

Thanks mate Interested in these fox beads (please dig out a link or are they on the page already? I'm rushing a little bit to get to the kitchen and make the roasts today) and good to see that others out there think about having rig sleeves with rubber beads shoved on and swivels rotating on that etc. etc. as I spent ages over the last few years fretting over this one. I like a fluoro leader on my helicopter rigs better than leadcore, I use a quality sea fishing fluoro in 23lb, it behaves beatitifully and stretches nice and straight, never seems to tangle with my pure braid hooklinks on small ring/uni swivels, and the whole setup looks very simple and neat, a small tapered leader knot (Jon Bones one on youtube is neat) has a fox tapered bore small soft bead that sits perfectly on a drennan small floatstop, the ring swivel can pop over the lot with just a gentle tug

I strongly disagree Leaders are only dangerous if they are tied irresponsibly without attention to detail What difference is there to a carp in towing around a perfectly thoughtfully tied leader or towing a load of line about? If the mainline breaks, a hooklink can just as easily slide off a leader as long as the correct fittings are used in the correct manner. I would say leaders are safer anyway. Rotary rig setups like chods have the swivel digging awkwardly at the line at the lead end during the fight, if the line being used is too weak, or the swivel is too thin, or roughened, there is a danger of it parting thus leaving a carp dangling a rig stuck in its mouth whereby there would be no danger with a tough leader.

I love using leaders, for a start choddies are essentially helicopter rigs and the swivels dig in at an awkward angle on naked line playing fish, hence the (necessity in my opinion) of using line of about 18lb minimum depends on lakebed but if it is relatively flat go for a heavy fluoro leader, or if it's a bit bumpy why not a sinking heavy hooklink braid? Both can have a couple of sinkers or putty dotted up em as well

Not fond anymore Once bought some off ebay that didn't dissolve (never again lol) They tend to fly off, and if you compress them too much they don't melt properly (I tried all the brands and supposed best ones) Also I don't like the thought of them elevating my hooklink only for it to descend sharply in a heap when they melt, and I think they often leave residue that spells danger to the cyprys in clear water I use them sometimes on my running rigs to plug the lead for the cast, but I can think of five superior ways to prevent your hair tangling

I can think of one fail safe and three almost perfect anti tangle rigs, but will only give away one to you as they were very hard earned through fretting, spending etc. Funnily enough the one that I don't use is the best of all and that is solid PVA bags. I prefer to use long hooklinks so they just don't suit me and are not that necessary on the lake I fish.

In short I much prefer the neatness of braid.