Carp Catchers Blog

Now the weather has started to warm up the fish are moving up in the water and are often seen cruising in the surface layers, a lot of anglers choose not to go after them with floater gear as they have limited fishing time and wish to relax behind static rods, while others find it too frustrating. There is an alternative to surface fishing, the zig rig, that could well help you bank one of those cruising carp.

The zig rig is a statically fished suspended bait on an extra long hooklink. The most popular hooklink material for zigging and floater fishing is Drennan Double Strength .  

The use of zig rigs is a very productive tactic on days were the fish are up in the water but is a tactic that is normally overlooked due to the difficulty of setting them up and getting them out into the lake due to tangling. Tangling can be reduced by the use of soluble rig foam or better still a small mesh bag filled with floaters nicked onto the hook. Kordas’ Boilie Funnel Web PVA System  is particularly good for making small mesh bags and melts quickly with no residue.

Setting up a zig rig is easier than many anglers think, a simple lead clip will be more than enough in terms of a lead set up.  Firstly you need to find out the depth of the area you wish to fish. To decide these areas observe the carps patrol routes as they cruise just below the surface.

Once an area and its’ depth has been selected, the next step is to decide the depth under that water you wish to present your bait. As I said earlier this can be determined from observing the fish you’re targeting  and estimating how far below the surface they are. Now you have decided on the depth you wish to fish you need to tie your hooklink to the correct length. For example, if you have choosen to fish an area that is 8ft deep and the fish are cruising about a foot under the surface then you need to tie up a 7ft hooklink. Once you’ve tied up your hooklink you’re ready to go.

A few tips that might help with using zig rigs.

Lay the hooklink down on the ground or coil it round in the bottom of a bucket to cast the rigs out.

Coiling the hooklink up and tying it in a coil with pva tape can make casting easier. 

Try as many different colours baitwise as possible to determine the best colour to use, black foam works well as it stands out against a light sky. Gardner Tackle do a good range of  Zig Rig Foam  including black.

If the fish are up in the water try and observe what they are eating if anything, especially this time of year as there are a lot of fly hatches which will get the fish feeding on food items up in the water. Remember if there is a fly hatch happening and the fish are feeding use a small piece of dark foam, flies aren’t bright yellow!

I believe that colour is the key with zigs and not the flavour, you are trying to imitate natural food items or induce a take from a curious carp, you are not normally trying to get the carp feeding on free offerings. Although feeding free offerings can be a good tactic on heavily stocked waters. Spod a sloppy mix that doesn’t contain many free offerings over the top to bring carp into the swim and get them feeding up in the water where the zigs rigs have been placed. 

Hook choice can be a crucial factor. You need a strong, small, sharp hook that will sit at the optimum angle two patterns to try are the ESP Stiff Rigger , especially for pop ups or the ESP Big T Carp Hook  for foam. A size 10 or 8 should be sufficient.

Lead size is also crucial, use the lightest lead you can to achieve the distance you need. The reason for the light leads is so that you do not bump the fish off while playing it on a long hooklink

Give zig rigs a little thought and adapt them for your water, you could be pleasantly surprised with the results.

Tight Lines

Dave

Customer Merv Pennel fished a weeks session on a lake in Northern France and had a fantastic 23 fish catch. Included in Mervs haul was the gorgeus brace of 50lb mirrors shown below. Merv tempted his haul over a big bed of particles, Mainline Baits Response Pellets  and boilies from the Essential Baits stable. Strangely Merv had no commons until the final 12 hours when he had 6 on the trot. The rigs Merv used consisted of Korda square inline leads, a Kryston Super Mantis Dark   hooklink tied to either a size 8 Korda Wide Gape or a size 6 Korda Longshank X Hook. Well done Merv good angling.

51lb Mirror Carp

52lb 2oz Mirror Carp

Best fishes,

John

An update on the Carp Catchers Blog about the Mag Aligner Rig. It occurred to me that not everyone would want to or have the time to tie their own Mag Aligner Rig. Well help is at hand Gardner Tackle do a Readymade Mag Aligner Rig which is well tied and takes the hassle and uncertainty out of rig tying. For more information or to purchase follow the above link to the main site.

Best fishes,

John

That carp catcher Ian has had hinself another 20 from Bluebell lakes. The 24lb 12oz mirror carp was caught over Ian’s usual bed of Mainline Activ-8  Response Pellets and  Nash Scopex Squid Liver Plus Robin Red  boilies. Ian’s rig included a 3oz Atomic lead and a size 8 Nash Fang Twister  hook. Nice fish, keep catching ‘em fella .

Best fishes,

John

Our customers have been catching so regularly, that I haven’t had time to do any blogs on my own fishing. I’ve still got plenty of customer catches to post, but I’ll do a quick blog about a recent session or I’ll fall too far behind. I fished hard right through the winter on my syndicate water with no success, but in fairness everybody struggled. I just had to be there to keep in touch with the water and in mid March persistence paid off. I had two mirror carp from a silty patch at 70yrds which weighed 26lb 8oz(photo-1) and 20lb 4oz (photo-2). They were both absolutely nailed(photo 3) on a new, really simple maggot rig I’ve developed. The hookholds were so good that I had to use long nosed pliers right up to the hilt to unhook the fish.  The mechanics of the rig I used over the winter were good, but it just looked too clumsy, so I rejigged it and at the first time of asking two fish, magic!! The components used to tie the rig are Rig Marole Hydro-Link Silt and size 10 Solar Stronghold Longshank Hooks . I’ll show you how to tie it soonish. Photo 3 shows that the fish were hooked with the bait going in, not on the way out, so I’ll probably do a blog about my thoughts on rig mechanics in the near future.

Photo 1

Photo 2

Photo 3

 Notice no mouth damage.

Best fishes,

John

The Mag Aligner rig was first thought up by Harry Haskell if memory serves. But it was Rob Maylin that tweaked it to its’ present form and consequently published his devastating results whilst using the Mag Aligner Rig. The rig itself incorporates both artificial and real maggots into its design. It is the way the Mag Aligner is tied that gives it the edge over other maggot rigs. The Mag Aligner rig is best fished with a big pva bag of live maggots over a solid gravel bottom.

The rig components used in this demonstration consist of the Enterprise Mag Aligner Imitation Maggots,  Gardner Mugga  size 10 hooks and  Sufix Sheath Skin  hooklink. (See picture below)

Step 1.

Cut an 8 inch length of the Sheath Skin hooklink material and strip back enough coating to tie on your desired hook with a palomar knot leaving an inch of stripped hooklink material below the hook. Remember if you don’t strip enough coating off to begin with you can always strip a little more off after tying the hook on. (See picture below)

Step 2.

Now thread an artificial Mag Aligner maggot onto a thin needle, going in at a slight angle from the thick end first and coming out towards the top of the thin end on the same side. (See picture below)

Step 3.

Thread the artificial maggot onto you hooklink material and then up over the eye of the hook so the eye sits just inside the thick end of the artificial maggot. (See pictures below)

Step 4.

Now tie a figure of eight knot with the other end of the hooklink for fast hassle free rig changes. (See picture below)

Step 5.

To add the final touch to the rig before casting out add two live maggots to the hook. (See picture below)

This rig is best presented on a helicopter setup with a large pva mesh bag of live maggots tied to the lead and nick the hook through the bag making sure the point faces out so not to mask the hook point.

Tight Lines

Dave

Ian Smith has been amongst them again with this nice mirror carp of 27lb 8oz. Fishing on the Bluebell Lakes complex Ian used a nice bed of  Mainline Baits Response Pellets in the Activ-8 flavour and  Nash Scopex Squid Liver Plus Robin Red  boilies to catch his broken linear mirror. Ian’s rig consisted of a 4oz Korda lead fished drop off style and a Korda Hybrid Stiff hooklink  tied to a Atomic Longshank Haula hook. Nice fish Ian well done.

Best fishes,

John

This Blog shows that the girls can catch them too. Customer Chris’s better half Laura got in on the act at Linear Fisheries, Manor Farm Lake recently. Fishing to a gravel patch just off the no fishing bank Laura tempted the monster 32lb 4oz mirror shown using Mainline Fusion boilies. Laura was using a 2.5 oz lead tied shocka rig style using a gravel Korda Safe Zone Kamo Leader . The rig Laura used was tied with Korda Supernatural Sinking Braid  to a size Kurv Shank hook. Well done Laura there’s plenty of guy’s out there who would love to catch a fish like that.

Best fishes

John

When it comes to casting accuracy a lot of people struggle with hitting the right spot every time when carp fishing, hopefully this blog will help you towards hitting that spot time after time.

Once you have located your choosen spot with your marker whether it be a clear gravel patch, silty pocket or just a choosen area to spod bait to wind down your marker float until it hits the lead then clip it up, making sure you have picked a suitable far bank marker to aim at which you will be able to pin point even during the hours of darkness. Now lay your marker rod down behind your swim along with the rod/rods you wish to place on the area, loosen the clutches then walk the marker setup and leads down the bank until you hit the clip on your marker rod. Now lay them all down side by side and walk back to your rods to clip them up also, before retrieving the leads attach a line marker such as the Armaled Mark Up Elastic  (see August blog – How To Tie A Sliding Stop Knot) to the line on each rod making sure it will sit behind the alarms and won’t affect bite indication. Once this is done you will be able to cast at your far bank marker during daylight or darkness and be completely confident that you hitting that spot,  just make sure that you unclip the line from your reels after casting out so your rods won’t be dragged in should you get a take. If you wish to spod to the area, place your spod rod on that same spot and walk your spod rod down to the same point, a stick in the ground is enough to ensure you don’t lose the mark. I would advise that you clip your spod rod a few feet short of the mark to allow for the swing back that will occur on the clipped up rods as they fall to the lake bed.

If you have to reel in the rod/rods to rebait make sure to clip the line up again with the line marker in the same place as when you first attached it to the line, i.e. if you attached the line marker between the last two eyes make sure you re clip the rod with the marker between those eyes. Also if you have a fish from the spot cast the rod out into open water away from the area to avoid any disturbance and clip the rod with the line marker in its original position.

A few tips to consider when using this method.

1. Make sure you lay all your rods in the same place when walking the leads down the bank.

2. Make sure you stand in exactly the same spot when casting, as if you stand too far forwards, backwards, to the left or the right you may land off the spot.

3. Once you’ve cast your rod out hold the tip high in the air to avoid the lead/spod bouncing back off the clip and missing the spot, this will also avoid damaging the line if you hit the clip too hard.

4. If the cast has strayed slightly left of the mark on the cast hold the rod up and out to the right slightly before you hit the clip, this will help correct the cast and visa versa if the cast has strayed to the right.

And remember if you miss the spot then recast the rod as it could mean all the difference between a blank and a fish on the bank.

Tight Lines

Dave

After Korda released their new DVD I was innundated with requests for the Korda Krusha Boilie Chopper  . Well guys’ we now have them in stock and they look pretty impressive. The Korda Krusha is designed to crush boilies, nuts and particles into either coarse chops or fine crumb, so they are ideal for making stick mixes, boilie chops and spod mixes. For coarse chops you just give the Krusha a couple of turns, for a finer crumb you just keep turning till the crumb is the required consistency. The Korda Krusha comes in two sizes, large and small. The small Krusha is suited to smaller particles such as hemp. For more details or to purchase visit the main site via the above link.

Best fishes,

John