How many "hair-rig" variations? Your preferences for river fish.

[Steve Arnold]

Had a few hours feeling bored this winters afternoon! As usual I started thinking about fishing, this time it was about hooks and rigs.

My mind is becoming increasingly confused, partly age related probably, but not helped after I tried to work out why the carp anglers use so many strangely named developments of what was a simple hair rig.

For barbel I have found the basic hair rig works well, but many bites did not develop and I often thought "chub". Probably my first attempt at a different rig involved the "D" rig arrangement and I did seem to hook a few more chub after that, but maybe I was just trying harder for that species.

Since trying various fancy rigs I have now a few that I am confident in, I certainly seem to hook carp with little problem, but who knows if these changes really made the difference?

This photo is of a drawing I made earlier whilst trying to remember what has worked for me.........

Sorry for the "iffy" drawing but it's years since I had any use for that skill!

So, what rigs do you favour for river species, if you can explain your reasoning as to why it works that might help me in my deliberations.

 

[@Clive]

Youv'e got too much time on your hands

a) the bait has to remain attached to the hook
b) it should be bream & chub resistant

That's my hair rig requirements.

 

[Keith M]

Youv'e got too much time on your hands

a) the bait has to remain attached to the hook
b) it should be bream & chub resistant

That's my hair rig requirements.

I’m in agreement with the above.

If I’m after Barbel and I want to deter chub from being hooked I use a very ’simple‘ hair rig setup like the one on the very bottom right of your diagram; only I use a fairly short shanked and wide gaped offset hook; which the chub on the streams that I fish (especially the small to medium sized shoal chub) often move off with the bait still held between their lips; with the hook still on the outside; which often results in the bait being pulled back out of their lips.

If the Chub are not being a problem; or I‘m targeting them specifically then I prefer to use a hook mounted bait instead of a hair rig; or an extremely short hair with the bait often hanging alongside the hook shank.

Keith

 

[Steve Arnold]

Youv'e got too much time on your hands

a) the bait has to remain attached to the hook
b) it should be bream & chub resistant

That's my hair rig requirements.

Yes, to your first observation!

a) I like screws and bait spikes as I experiment with different boilies through the session. Rarely do I want to be sure the bait will stay on for hours, that's why I will never be a dedicated carp angler! But their ways with rigs is interesting, especially when it's too miserable to go fishing!

b) I am happy to catch anything that can get a decent bait in their mouths! I have been surprised there are not bigger shoals of bream in my section of the Lot, I can understand carp and barbel anglers being frustrated if their baits are wrecked by too many "nuisance" species.

 

[Steve Arnold]

I’m in agreement with the above.

If I’m after Barbel and I want to deter chub from being hooked I use a very ’simple‘ hair rig setup like the one on the very bottom of your diagram; only I use a fairly short shanked and wide gaped offset hook; which the chub on the streams that I fish (especially the small to medium sized shoal chub) often move off with the bait still held between their lips; with the hook still on the outside; which often results in the bait being pulled back out of their lips.

If the Chub are not being a problem; or I‘m targeting them specifically then I prefer to use a hook mounted bait instead of a hair rig; or an extremely short hair with the bait often hanging alongside the hook shank.

Keith

If I was restricted to just one choice of hook on the Lot it would be the Nash Pinpoint Flota Claw hook. But I would like two sizes, the 7 for chub and barbel and the 5 for carp, though the chub and barbel seem to cope with the size 5 easily enough as well!

Unfortunately these sizes have been discontinued so I use a size 6 Claw now. Still catching these species!

But the curved shanks hooks will work, the longshank useful as well.

Have I caught more by experimenting? Who can tell?

But for me it's all fascinating! that's some of my feelings when faced with these choices! Keeps me going

 

[@Clive]

Yes, to your first observation!

a) I like screws and bait spikes as I experiment with different boilies through the session. Rarely do I want to be sure the bait will stay on for hours, that's why I will never be a dedicated carp angler! But their ways with rigs is interesting, especially when it's too miserable to go fishing!

b) I am happy to catch anything that can get a decent bait in their mouths! I have been surprised there are not bigger shoals of bream in my section of the Lot, I can understand carp and barbel anglers being frustrated if their baits are wrecked by too many "nuisance" species.

I use bait screws simply because no matter what size boilie or pellet that you use, the nearest part is always the same distance from the hook so you don't need different length hairs. As Keith mentions; having a gap (around 8 to 10 mm for me) helps prevent catching too many chub or bream, although bream are persistant bu99ers. On the Dearne it was important not to have to play, land and then re-cast every time a chub took the barbel baits as the barbel were very wary. The hair gap was important to avoid hooking the chub. But when Boris takes the bait it doesn't matter to me what shape or brand the hook is. As long as it is sharp and strong I don't care.

With non-hair rigged baits like luncheon meat I like to have a split shot, a BB usually, a couple of inches from the hook or tungsten putty if I was using coated braid.

 

[Steve Arnold]

I use bait screws simply because no matter what size boilie or pellet that you use, the nearest part is always the same distance from the hook so you don't need different length hairs. As Keith mentions; having a gap (around 8 to 10 mm for me) helps prevent catching too many chub or bream, although bream are persistant bu99ers. On the Dearne it was important not to have to play, land and then re-cast every time a chub took the barbel baits as the barbel were very wary. The hair gap was important to avoid hooking the chub. But when Boris takes the bait it doesn't matter to me what shape or brand the hook is. As long as it is sharp and strong I don't care.

With non-hair rigged baits like luncheon meat I like to have a split shot, a BB usually, a couple of inches from the hook or tungsten putty if I was using coated braid.

Thanks Clive, useful observations. Funny how my often poor memory will certainly remember these details!

The barbel here are often the least cautious species, maybe it's just that there are more of them than chub and carp.

I enjoy the chub as they are such handsome fish. There are many really small chub but a big gap before the 4lb-6lb specimens, I do not get bored catching those better sized chub, just not enough of them!

 

[@Clive]

The Dearne is similar to the Cèlè in size, but had a short stretch containing some very large barbel that topped out at over 16lb before they declined. There were also chub to around 6lb. In order to catch one of the specimen barbel you had to leave your bait in a likely spot often all ssssion and avoid catching any chub. Typically I would use around 1oz of lead spread over several LG shot on a link contained in a pva bag with some small pellets to deaden the impact as the depth averaged only around 3 feet and those few barbel were very wary.

Hence the importance of the gap in the hair rig. It was to avoid hooking chub. If you did go for the chub instead there was some good sport on lighter tackle.

 

[Steve Arnold]

The Dearne is similar to the Cèlè in size, but had a short stretch containing some very large barbel that topped out at over 16lb before they declined. There were also chub to around 6lb. In order to catch one of the specimen barbel you had to leave your bait in a likely spot often all ssssion and avoid catching any chub. Typically I would use around 1oz of lead spread over several LG shot on a link contained in a pva bag with some small pellets to deaden the impact as the depth averaged only around 3 feet and those few barbel were very wary.

Hence the importance of the gap in the hair rig. It was to avoid hooking chub. If you did go for the chub instead there was some good sport on lighter tackle.

In the Cajarc "pond" I take a more carp angling approach to barbel. I am usually camping there and can leave my baits out many hours, there are usually only a few barbel bites over a couple of days, but the barbel are often as big as any I have caught from this river.

On the town side of the pond I have caught plenty of smaller barbel using feeder techniques. The bigger barbel I am sure are wary of this disturbance, a pva bag of bits and a boilie left for several hours seems to find the better barbel.

Maybe if I spent longer hours at other parts of the river this approach would find big barbel, but I get tired now and need my home comforts. Even my carp are caught on short sessions when I can be pretty sure where the river conditions will have pushed them for their comfort. I actually catch carp when the river is very low (weirs) and very high (canal sections). There are also a couple of places I know they take shelter amongst sunken trees along the far bank, I have to wait for the river flow to almost stall before I can get a bait in front of them!

This is probably what keeps me thinking about rigs, so many different species and conditions can be caught with the same basic approach. But, it needs tweaked to get the best out of it!

PS..... I feel the need to get a big fish to finish off this year. Too many social events to give me a few hours, but my mind is festering over this so I guess I will just have to get up early soon!

 

[@Clive]

My thoughts are that location is far more important than rigs where the larger barbel are concerned. Especially in this region of France where their numbers are so low. In your river this creates extra difficulties in that you don't have much near bank fishing and the more line you have out means more chance of drifting weed or leaves fouling the line. Also you have more competition from large carp and bream. I don't think that the rig is important. But every now and then I would experiment by finding a chute or narrowing of the flow where the current is stronger than anywhere else and fish a heavy lead and whole maize grains to avoid the catfish. Two of the three 9lb fish that I have had over here came from such locations.

 

[Steve Arnold]

I like the idea of a made up hook rig with a loop to attach to the hook length material. Now that I use Esp tungsten loaded coated braid (pretty tough!) I find I just have to change a blunt hook as required, or maybe try another hair rig variation.

This video is of one of my most used rigs, though with a longer "boom" of semi-stiff ESP coated braid.......

 

[Philip]

My thinking on self hooking rigs in rivers for Carp has changed alot over time. Initially I tried to take rigs that worked well on stillwaters onto the rivers, it was all about subtlety, braids and fine hairs etc etc but I learnt pretty fast that a flow or wash from a barge would mess up my super duper rig in no time

Nowadays while I still try to make things as subtle as I can but I put a lot more emphasis on keeping a rig fishing effectively and I will sacrifice some subtlety if I have to.
By that I mean making sure that the rig is still sitting there waiting to work and not be left in a tangled ball if a barge goes past or a few Chub or Bream decide to have an exploratory tug at it.

One of the first changes I made was to move away from standard braids as a hooklink to using coated braids ...going right back to the days of Kryston Snake Skin and Mantis which where some of the first to appear. Snake Skin I didnt like at all but Mantis was much better, it was basically coated silkworm and I caught alot of fish on that.
Nowadays more often than not I will just use a bit of Mono which I think is a good compromise between flexibility but enough stiffness to still be pretty tangle free. Its easy to forget in these days of so much hooklink choice that a simple bit of mono still has a lot going for it !

At the hook end if I am using a good sized boile & after Carp I use a bait screw fished on a swimmer rig. Basically this is similar to the "claw rig" in the diagrams on the first post but with a bait screw instead of a ring & the loop is much smaller & tighter and starts and finishes at the eye...so basically its a very small loop on the back of the eye of the hook with a bait screw mounted on the loop. The bait is then screwed onto the bait screw. Mounted like this its impossible for the bait to turn over and mask the hook.

One other thing to mention, I messed around quite a bit with stiff rigs in the past..I was never really a huge fan of them but I can see they might have a place on the river. I still have a spool of ESP stiff link somewhere and I can imagine something like that fished as a short hooklink with the bait mounted as I describe above would literally be impossible to tangle. I recon I could screw it up into a ball in my hand and chuck it in the edge and it would unravel itelf to still fish effectively. If I can find the time I may give it a try this year.

 

[Steve Arnold]

My thinking on self hooking rigs in rivers for Carp has changed alot over time. Initially I tried to take rigs that worked well on stillwaters onto the rivers, it was all about subtlety, braids and fine hairs etc etc but I learnt pretty fast that a flow or wash from a barge would mess up my super duper rig in no time

Nowadays while I still try to make things as subtle as I can but I put a lot more emphasis on keeping a rig fishing effectively and I will sacrifice some subtlety if I have to.
By that I mean making sure that the rig is still sitting there waiting to work and not be left in a tangled ball if a barge goes past or a few Chub or Bream decide to have an exploratory tug at it.

One of the first changes I made was to move away from standard braids as a hooklink to using coated braids ...going right back to the days of Kryston Snake Skin and Mantis which where some of the first to appear. Snake Skin I didnt like at all but Mantis was much better, it was basically coated silkworm and I caught alot of fish on that.
Nowadays more often than not I will just use a bit of Mono which I think is a good compromise between flexibility but enough stiffness to still be pretty tangle free. Its easy to forget in these days of so much hooklink choice that a simple bit of mono still has a lot going for it !

At the hook end if I am using a good sized boile & after Carp I use a bait screw fished on a swimmer rig. Basically this is similar to the "claw rig" in the diagrams on the first post but with a bait screw instead of a ring & the loop is much smaller & tighter and starts and finishes at the eye...so basically its a very small loop on the back of the eye of the hook with a bait screw mounted on the loop. The bait is then screwed onto the bait screw. Mounted like this its impossible for the bait to turn over and mask the hook.

One other thing to mention, I messed around quite a bit with stiff rigs in the past..I was never really a huge fan of them but I can see they might have a place on the river. I still have a spool of ESP stiff link somewhere and I can imagine something like that fished as a short hooklink with the bait mounted as I describe above would literally be impossible to tangle. I recon I could screw it up into a ball in my hand and chuck it in the edge and it would unravel itelf to still fish effectively. If I can find the time I may give it a try this year.

Thanks for that info Philip, I think we are on the same page as regards to river rigs. The semi-stiff coated braids from ESP and Nash work well for me now. I still use mono and fluorocarbon at times but they have their limitations with so many of my swims having a lining of sharp edged rocks, the result of many man made features constructing weirs and canal sections.

I started fishing on the Lot several years ago and was using a spool of Fox Illusions fluoro in 10lb (I think!) and this had quite good abrasion resistance, compared to mono anyway. Recently I bought another spool in 19lb and, although it says "soft", it actually has enough stiffness to lay out quite straight.

Where I can use mono or fluoro I still use it, but I have lost so many good fish to cut-offs that I usually play safe with quality coated braid now.

The spinner rigs with the swivel rigidly clipped to the hook eye does have many benefits in a swirly river situation. Combined with tungsten loaded coated braid and a bait screw holding the boilie the whole arrangement lies flat and straight, absolutely nailed to the river bed.

The only flexibility is built in to allow the bait and then the hook to be sucked into the fishes mouth. It works for carp, barbel are not discouraged but I am not too sure about chub. There is an angler on one of the Facebook groups who uses a scaled down version of the spinner rig to catch all the river species, even including roach!

Always trying to improve my rigs, thanks for your input Philip.