I thought that i would put up a quick post with a link to PDF versions of my most popular howto articles. In the migration some of the images didn’t come over so whilst i fix it here are the articles with the images in easy to print format.
Photography for fishing part 1
Photography for fishing part 2
Thats it for now – if there are any other instructional articles you would like to see here let me know via the contact me button at the top
following my previous post about using fox arma mesh to fish with a whole load of new / old baits I thought I would give a quick update from this weekend. This weekends session on Thorney Weir whilst a blank was interesting as it did prove a point in that you can fish bread in Arma Mesh and get it to last over night. Gone are the days that you would have to re cast every 30 mins if you had bread on the hook. Gone also is the notion that you can’t fish bread at distance. I put a 3oz lead well in excess of 100 yards and the meshed bread was perfectly fine.
Some of the bread pellets looked a little muddy as I was experimenting with meshed lob worms… not recommended the worms crawl out eventually 🙂 Continue reading “the return of bread”
Like many carp anglers I have gotten blinkered into believing that boilies are the only way, I have even written reviews of boilies here and pretty much all of my carp have been on boilies for the past few years. However all that is going to change as of now…. well last week.
Last week I was fishing a small commercial where I was told that the approach should be “anything but boilies” and having blanked there before on boilies I could well believe them. So being a boillie angler what else was there to use. In the past when I was a kid I used to use luncheon meat all the time however I remember that it was a real nightmare keeping it on the hook so I found myself looking for something else. Continue reading “Boilies are not the answer”
Well this is the 1st post after quite a while and as it has been a while I thought I would start with another “How to” and this time on a knot that you use so infrequently many anglers forget how to tie it. The knot I am referring to is of course the Arbor knot. As it stands the only use for it is to attach the main line to the spool ( it is not load bearing) but don’t let that put you off. It is quick and easy to tie and packs down nice and small. Some anglers use a load of granny knots or even tape but this knot is far far better as it is small, quick and will not affect your line at all ( unlike tape).
So lets see how to tie it ( click any picture to make it larger) .
Continue reading “Attaching your line to your reel, the Arbor knot”
I have written a lot about rigs and how to construct various types for various fishing situations, I even “invented” my own rig the Big Pig line aligner. However recently I find myself slipping back to simpler times and discarding complicated rigs and moving back to a simpler time, a time where we used standard simple rigs that caught fish rather than the angler.
With this in mind I present to you the blow back rig, one of the simplest and easiest rigs to tie and it catches fish too,
1st you need to assemble the components
I know that I said that I hated tying pop-ups onto rigs for chod rigs etc but I have had a change of heart. No I am not about to knock spikers but i have seen another way that actually seems to work. In the past I was always shown that the way to attach popups ( when using floss) was to use a complicated knot based on a grinner which worked about 50% of the time and was a nightmare to tie when you were tired or it was dark or it was cold, or in fact any time that was not at home, in the warm with good lighting.
That has now changed. There is finally an easy want to tie on a a popup using floss ! By the way I must confess that I didn’t think up this idea, it was in the latest issue of Carpology magazine the best “howto” magazine for carp fishing on sale at the moment. So how do you do it ?
Take off about 6-8 inches of floss, I am using Fox yellow bait floss as it is easy to see and in my personal opinion I wouldn’t bother matching floss colour to bait anyway ( especially if you are using bring fluro popups ). Make sure that you use either genuine bait floss or unscented dental floss unless you think carp like the taste of mint 🙂 As bait floss is not that expensive anyway I would just go with the standard floss from a reputable tackle manufacturer. Continue reading “tying popups on to rigs”
As I described here, and here, I dislike tying popup’s on to rig rigs for d-rigs. It is fiddly and really wastes valuable time. Anyway since I discovered Solar Spikers I have not looked back. In a recent post I showed the Multi rig and for some reason I tied it with a rig ring… well here is a brief update showing a finished rig tied with a solar spiker. Quick easy and effective
Here is the rig with no bait to show how it all goes together
As I don’t have any popup rigs on the site ( Apart from the chod) I thought I would chime in with my implementation of the Multi Rig, sometimes ( incorrectly ) also called the Jon Mac rig. The rig is exclusively for popups and create a very aggressive hooking angle, coupled with its ease to tie makes it one of my firm favourites. So before I witter on too long lets see what you need to make it ( Click any picture for higher resolution image) :
As you can see there is no tubing just 2 rings one of which I suggest is smaller than the other. Some people just say to use 2 of the same size but there is a method in my madness and the 2 rigs will make it far far easier.
Continue reading “the Multi Rig”
The KD rig was designed by Kenny Dorsett and my 1st exposure to it was when I was experimenting with a standard knotless knot rig in order to present particles to what I thought were easy to catch carp. I wanted to present the hook in such a way as to hook them differently to how most anglers were catching them due to mouth damage. I thought if I could hook them in a different place I would have a better chance of landing them. A few months later I discovered that I had “re invented” the KD rig. I also originally started to put the weight on the hair ( rather then the hook link) as I normally use PVA sticks and was getting annoyed by moving the counter weight along the hook link every time I attached a new stick. Moving the weight to the hair make the PVA stick sit far far better and eliminated the irritation of loosing the weight at some point ( making your bait sit 6-8″ from the bottom)
The rig is not just for particle fishing but in my humble opinion works best for small baits and it is worth noting that normally it is used with buoyant baits, if you are not using buoyant baits then you can dispense with the weight on the hair. Continue reading “The KD rig”
Well after a previous post indicating how to make the “CV Safety Rig” with lead core I thought I would show you how it was meant to look. As I have now found a reliable source for “the bit” ( the black piece of curved metal in the pic above) I though I would make one up to show you all how it should look. Come back later for an in depth look at how to make one of these rigs from the components.
Note that this is the only time is it acceptable to super glue a bead to lead core, and if you make one from the picture above note that you only superglue the bottom bead. The top bead should be free to move and should slide freely over the join from leadcore to your mainline.
The Masterblanker 