This is something that has always passed through my mind. Whilst I’m sitting at home, tying up rigs in preparation for the next few outings to the lake, my imagination often goes into over-drive as I try to ‘invent’ a new rig or tweak an existing one to improve my catch rates, but in the end I generally never venture far from what has proven to work for me in the past. Then I wonder to myself, are all these rig components ie. blow back style rigs, shrink tube, combi style rigs, ronnie rig etc really necessary in the first place? I’m not saying that none of them work, as all these items and styles have definitely found a place in the carp world for a reason, but what I’m saying is, do they actually improve our catch rates at all? Would you still achieve the same success without them? Or do all these gizmos just improve our confidence in what we are doing? For example, if you put two rigs side by side in a baited situation, one being a very nice looking mechanised rig and the other being the good old humble braided hair rig and the mechanised rig was out fished by the braided hair rig, would you still use it because it looks good? Or would you have the confidence to go back to the old school? Just a little something for us all to think about maybe? Some of you reading this may think I’m talking a load of crap and that’s fine, you are entitled to your opinion, but I believe in many situations, the most important rig component that any angler can have in his armory is a sharp hook.
If you are ever to watch a carp feeing on the bottom, sifting through the debris in its search for food, it is merley sucking and blowing, sorting the edible items from the muck and when it sucks in your hook it will instinctively reject it as a non edible item, all your hook has to do then, is grab hold on the way out! Sounds simple I know, but when you break it down, that is the bare basics of rig mechanics and if your hook is not sharp, then you won’t really stand much chance at all, whether you have mechanised rig or not. All of this is only a matter of opinion of course, but I like to think there is some sense behind what I am trying to say and remember what I said at the beginning of this post, I’m as guilty as anyone for trying to dream up the next best contraption!
I hope you have found this piece to be at least, slightly interesting to read, as I did enjoy writing it.