jontain

I have never had a problem with steaming the hook link, once the kettle is boiling properly it will only take a few seconds to fully shrink the tubing down so shouldn't damage the line. I also like to steam in a kicker by leaving about 1cm of tubing past the eye of the hook and whilst steaming hold the hooklength at an angle which will hold once the tubing cools. This can really help with barbless rigs.

I need to get more confident with bottom baits for hook baits, 9 times out of 10 I will opt for a pop-up or balancing a bottom bait.

Ah I see, to be fair my chods are usually fished naked with 4-6 inch of tubing between the bottom bead and the lead. Not only has this reduced hook pulls but also moves the lead away from the fish during the fight. On this particular lake with the small fish and deep silt I tend to use no more than a 1.5 oz lead so hoping that the lead doesn't cause any damage, I can't say I have ever noticed any but I will keep this in mind mate.

Oh really? I did scale it all down as there aren't many larger fish in the lake but I didn't realise these popup style rigs weren't suited to the smaller stock? I have heard that the 360 rig, which has received a lot of attention in the press, can be a death trap for the smaller fish but there was no explanation as to why?

Guilty as charge me laud! I wanted to test it out as it looks a lot like chod rig with a higher curve but I wanted to see the difference in takes/hookholds. I had it in mind for my difficult syndicate which has more than its fair share of the green stuff. I like to test changes out on my nice easy park lake as I can see what does and doesn't work rather than sitting on my hands wondering if the rig is fishing or if the fish have moved on.

Haha, I think you would struggle to get away with it on this lake as every time I've been the balif comes round for a chin wag! Also he brings luck so would likely end up having to unhook a fish in front of him lol

Hook is a wide gape and the curve is made using one of fox's withy pool sleeve. The fish was about 8-10lb

Unfortunately it's a barbless rule on the water so barbs are not an option, good point though. I did think it was unlucky as I have not heard anything negative about the withy pool?

Hi all. Just wanted your thoughts on the withy pool rig. Tied up a couple a few months back. Have had 3 fish on them so far but the last fish suffered torn tissue on the bottom of the mouth (inside by about an inch). I am slightly apprehensive to use it again because of this as I played the fish in gently, it looks as though the hook may have slipped (barbless) and has torn from the initial entry point. I gave the wound a liberal coating of mouth treatment but I wasn't overly happy with the level of damage. Should got a picture of damage but wanted to get him back and recovering ASAP. The other takes on this rig nailed them right in the bottom lip rather than inside the mouth and resulted in no damage at all. Thoughts?

Got both and I've found either dry or full sloppy goes out easier and with less mess with the spoon. Anything in between dry and slop and the spod is fine but can get the odd blocked boilies.

Cheaper option than the Supa Brolly is the Royale. I got the basic non system version and it's been great, not for nights mind you just use it for an easy day shelter on those windy and wet days.

GR60 in 12 lb has been good to me so far on my turnos 8000's, got a lot of recommendations for it when I bought the reels. It has a really low memory, I have had one birds nest incident but that was down to dodgy spooling on my part!

Looks similar to the spomb concept, be interested to see if its easier to load and if the catch gets jammed as easy as the spombs.

Went from korda subline to gr60 and I'll not be going back. Other than one spool which I [censored]ed up it has been great, nice to tie and has very low memory.

Also what do you guys tend to do with the left over line? I have about 50 to 100 meters left on one but not enough to do a spool. Is it worth using as backing or rigs. I've always tried to avoid backing line as every extra knot is a weak point but depending on how long you make the backing I guess it might never come into play?