What hook for bolt rigs?

[TnCarper]

Although this is likely not the best time of the year for them, I'm thinking of giving a bolt rig a try. I'm wondering, what style and size of hook would work best?

[Gazlaaar]

For me

Hook size all depends on the size of bait, if I were using a 14 to 16mm bait, I'd use a size 6, an 18 to 20mm, I'd use a size 4. I like curves, just a simple knotless knot and a hook. Using curves eliminates the need for shrink tube, I just think the less components you use, the less likely it will be seen.

[TnCarper]

Thanks, curves is what I mainly use. On a side note, are 3oz inline leads sufficent?

Thanks again.

[Gazlaaar]

It all totally depends on what your using and how your fishing.

I like a spread of 20mm boilies so I use longish rigs and the lightest lead I can get away with.

If I were fishing smaller baits like particles I'd be using shorter rigs with heavier leads.

It just depends on the feeding situation your creating.

[salokcinnodrog]

For my big fish water, I have stopped using curved hooks, simply because I now always buy Solar 101's, in a size 6 or 4.

Whichever is tied up in the rig bin is grabbed, no worry, winter or summer, no matter what bait size.

You have a hair on your hook, that hair with any size hook means the hook will follow, and bigger hooks get better hookholds.

It is only with pop-ups that I worry about matching hookbait size to the hook, my 20mm pop-ups will lift a size 4 101.

 

 

After seeing fish eject even curved shank hooks tied with a knotless knot, I always use a line aligner, and in most cases, lengthening the hook shank length makes it harder to eject as well.

 

 

 

 

[ianain]

21 minutes ago, salokcinnodrog said:

[...using a line aligner...] lengthening the hook shank makes it harder to eject

Is it the suppleness that's better than using a long shank hook?

[cloud9]

I'm presuming that you can make the shank as long or as short as you want, rather than the fixed length of the long shank hook, that's my guess anyhow......

[salokcinnodrog]

1 hour ago, ianain said:

Is it the suppleness that's better than using a long shank hook?

Not as far as I can see. I've used braided rigs for hundreds of years, plain braid, combi rigs and coated braid.

It was Danny Fairbrass who said he never needed rig tubing on knotless knotted rigs, but I'm wondering if that was with stiffer materials.

 

I watched fish in Chantry park lake  pick up my carefully positioned braid knotless knotted rigs, from a distance of about 3metres. I saw the hookbait go back, in the mouth, saw the hook and bait come flying out again, on both semi fixed and running leads. I swapped straight back to a line aligner and put the rigs back in the same place, and hooked my next two pickups, from fish that I had watched eject the other rigs.

 

On Thwaite, I used to use the water as my experiment lake, where I researched lead setups, running vs semi-fixed, helicopter, leadcore, and even baits.

I got numerous single bleeps with the same knotless knotted rig, (water colour meant I couldn't watch them close up), no development of the take, even though we could see the water rocking.  A switch back to line aligner there with running leads and I started hooking them again.

Thwaite was not a particularly pressured carp water either, mostly fished by match anglers, so rigs should not have been a major issue.

 

 

 

 

 

6 minutes ago, cloud9 said:

I'm presuming that you can make the shank as long or as short as you want, rather than the fixed length of the long shank hook, that's my guess anyhow......

Longshank hooks tend to be more difficult to eject, but the length can supposedly lead to mouth damage, a line aligner replicates the difficulty to eject as the bent hook rig, but with tubing no mouth damage.