Richard Gibson
Member
Does anyone use a helicopter type rig (lead attached to mainline, hooklink free running on large eyed swivel) for Chub and Barbel?
I'm thinking it could have 2 advantages - 1) safer for fish in the event of a mainline break, 2) if you fish with a bow in the line, the hooklink could slide back to nestle in the curve, which would keep baited hook further away from the lead.
The downside could be hooking ability/bite indication.
I fished this rig for a few hours yesterday evening and had 1 nice Chub. I fished it 'naked' on the mainline with a top bead that would slide with a small amount of pressure. The bead was smaller than the swivel which wasn't ideal (the swivel could pass over it too easily) but it's all I had.
However on the downside I seemed to get a lot of pickups (or so it felt like) where my bobbins lifted up, but didn't covert into wrap arounds (this happened 4 or five times). Perhaps I should have struck at these? I was fishing paste around the hook so in hindsight this might have been an issue.
Hooklink was set to around 1m.
This is my first season targeting Barbel so don't have any experience to fall back on and compare vs a leadclip or free running lead.
I couldn't see the rig in the water so I have no idea if it was working as I intended.
Any thoughts?
I'm thinking it could have 2 advantages - 1) safer for fish in the event of a mainline break, 2) if you fish with a bow in the line, the hooklink could slide back to nestle in the curve, which would keep baited hook further away from the lead.
The downside could be hooking ability/bite indication.
I fished this rig for a few hours yesterday evening and had 1 nice Chub. I fished it 'naked' on the mainline with a top bead that would slide with a small amount of pressure. The bead was smaller than the swivel which wasn't ideal (the swivel could pass over it too easily) but it's all I had.
However on the downside I seemed to get a lot of pickups (or so it felt like) where my bobbins lifted up, but didn't covert into wrap arounds (this happened 4 or five times). Perhaps I should have struck at these? I was fishing paste around the hook so in hindsight this might have been an issue.
Hooklink was set to around 1m.
This is my first season targeting Barbel so don't have any experience to fall back on and compare vs a leadclip or free running lead.
I couldn't see the rig in the water so I have no idea if it was working as I intended.
Any thoughts?
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