Price: STONZE (Small, Med & Large) £ 1.25STUMPY RIGS £ 1.99STONZE KIT £ 2.95 Let’s get one thing straight before we start. Stonze are not coated leads. They are real, genuine stones. They are not of uniform shape, they vary through round (ish), stumpy, flat, elongated, irregular, oval. In fact they are all shapes except square – just like stones, which they are! Let’s look at some bullet points as listed by Pallatrax
If you’ve ever watched a wary carp, or maybe a barbel, examining a bait in clear water then you immediately realise the potential of fishing with these natural weights. More than once I’ve seen barbel approach a bait lying on a patch of gravel and immediately its pectoral fins have begun to quiver, apparently nervously. It approaches the bait, circles it and, it appears at least, to be looking for ‘suspicious’ objects. Most often it spooks when it comes close to the bomb or feeder. A cylinder of plastic or a lump of lead isn’t exactly matched to a gravel bottom. You don’t need to be a rocket scientist to work out that a real stone is going to blend in very nicely indeed. A real stone on its own, even on a silty bottom, is going to be more natural than a lump of lead or plastic. I fished the complete Stonze System, using the Stonze weight and a Stumpy Rig, the one that incorporates a 12lb fluoro hooklength. I had some misgivings about the shortness of the hooklength at 3ins (ideal for pop-up baits, which I wasn’t using) but thought, what the hell, with the bait lying so close to the Stonze this will really test it. I fished the same boilie and used two methods, the first being a small bag of pellets hung on the hook, and the second was to clamp a wad of Method mix around the Stonze, mixed so that it would break away from the Stonze when it hit bottom. My mate Dave fished the same swim, using the same bait, with a Method feeder for the first half of the session then a conventional lead bomb for the second half. The result was that I caught two barbel of about 7lb apiece and Dave didn’t get a bite. And he usually does. Agreed, there is nothing conclusive about that trial. It needs to be tried on a great many more occasions to validate it, but it’s a good start for the Stonze and causes me to look forward to trying it in some more situations where a camouflaged rig may fool some very spooky fish. The Stonze System – Stumpy Rigs The system includes eight hand-tied (in England) Stumpy Rigs. You just add a Stonze and you have a complete terminal set up. The choice is 12lb or 15lb fluorocarbon, 12lb or 15lb braid, size 6 or 8, barbed or barbless hooks. The rigs are approx 3″ in length. The Stonze System also includes six items:
The Stonze system is now available from Pallatrax stockists, a list of stockists can be found on the Pallatrax website: www.pallington.freeuk.com. | |||||
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