The Rigs Page – The Spaghetti Rig

If your tackle bag is anything like mine it’s stuffed with all kinds of old crap that at some time I imagined might be useful for fishing.

Testing new theories and rigs has now become an obsession of mine. It seems I now take more pleasure out of coming up with new and inventive concepts than I do the actual fishing – and if you believe that I’ll tell you another! I have been busy field-testing yet another idea, which I’m pleased to say, stands the test of time.

This new concept should change the way you present your bait and build confidence in establishing a safe surrounding area for your target fish to feed within, whether carp, barbel or whatever. I came up with the idea some six months ago and have been testing it with Big Rik after a conversation we had about pick-ups not registering. The facts are, no matter how good an angler we are we will never really know what’s going on under the surface and whether or not our target fish has mouthed our bait, picked it up, moved it slightly or even lifted the lead some 3 foot as not all activity will indicate back up to our buzzers, etc. (but that’s another article).

So…..this last season has seen me fishing double baits, whether boilie or maize or tigers due to the following theory: If a fish is a mouthing your bait then it could be fair to say that a resistance is being felt when the mouth starts to close on the other side of the bait and the fish feels the hair/line etc. In placing a double bait in its place then a different feeling of an additional bait could fool the fish into feeling confident enough to run. It’s a theory I’ve been testing and I’ve had some very good results.

So……I’ve now got double baits on my hair which I’m feeling confident about, but my surrounding freebie baits are singles which could highlight my hookbait as a danger sign and could move the fish away from feeding on my hookbait and leave them feeding on the freebies instead.

My first obstacle to overcome was to surround my hookbait with similar offerings and at range this was a problem. I’d read Tim Paisley’s theories about super-gluing boilies together and even pushing two baits close together on PVA string, but with under-water turbulence I wasn’t confident in thinking my two baits together would remain intact for too long and certainly not for 4-5 hours. That’s when I came up with the following strategy, which as you read this will unfold as an obvious solution.

The Spaghetti Rig

By inserting an inch long piece of dry spaghetti into one boilie and then pushing on another boilie up to the hilt, I’d managed to overcome the problem. I could now place 6-8 double boilies, fastened together with a piece of spaghetti, into a PVA bag and fish at range. The spaghetti will soften in the water hence no harm would come to the fish and will keep the boilies spiked together for up to 15 hours.

I knew that if I’d used superglue or twigs to staple the baits together then there was a chance that the fish either wouldn’t like the taste of glue or be unhappy about chomping on the twig. Having the ability to send out freebies as double baits allowed me to create an apparently safe feeding area, for those double freebie baits would look the same as the double hookbait.

A simple, but extremely effective edge is what makes the difference and for me, the Spaghetti Rig has certainly made a difference.

So open your mind, try it out no matter what your target fish or size of bait. You never know, you might start upping your catch rate!

But more importantly, remember you heard it on FISHINGmagic first. Good luck!