Pinning down your hooklength and / or mainline?

[Howard Cooke]

"Upstream ledger whenever you can"

One of THE best bits of barbel fishing advice. Negates the need to pin the line above the lead down as the flow does it for you.

To backlead effectively you need to be able to lower the rig in, IMO.

The thing with backleading is that bites come completely out of the blue. No knocks or indications, just WHAM. Nearly lost the rod on a 9lber a few evenings ago, I was 6 inches from my reel but the bite was that lightening fast, and the hooked fish bolted out of the swim quicker than the baitrunner could engage. I was as white as Casper during the fight!

ATB

Agree Ash. But you just need a centrepin for that sort of fishing. No waiting for a baitrunner to engage.

 

[Ash Gould]

It would of been the same with my Speedia and the ratchet on Howard. The inertia in that split second is enough to move the whole lot. Im not skilled enough to ledger with a pin with the ratchet not on!

 

[Ian Hugo Arnott]

Pinning down hook lengths was of course invented on The River Pinn.

We find it useful to use plasticine in suitable colours and weights. Of course if one gets snagged in the margins, where else would one fish on such a river, then the BURBOT absolutely adore the stuff, so nothing is wasted.

Regards,



Hugo

 

[Graham Young]

Because most of my fishing is a rod length out i can have the line entering the water tight to the bank and have my back lead tight to the bank with the line pinned down as i described

Oh I see, I thought you had discovered some way of fishing without the line entering the water, I still don't understand how IF fish can hear the current against the line how they are able to differentiate the line from anything else that enters the water. personally I doubt very much that fish have the ability to hear the current against the line or have the intelligence to be able to know that it is line or anything else.

 

[Richard Longmuir]

I'm not convinced that the back lead does the job unless it's quite heavy as the pressure of the water against the line can lift it up and then work against you by raising it up off the river bed made worst when picking up debris.Not done any trials but just my thoughts.

 

[Howard Cooke]

I'm not convinced that the back lead does the job unless it's quite heavy as the pressure of the water against the line can lift it up and then work against you by raising it up off the river bed made worst when picking up debris.Not done any trials but just my thoughts.

Agreed Richard, you do need a sufficiently heavy weight. I do predominantly fish in the margins though meaning you can be more confident the back lead is doing what it's meant to.

 

[Ian Hugo Arnott]

I have often caught barbel by freelining meat and casting onto ranunculus beds. The barbel come and find it exactly like surface feeding carp and the slurping is very similar.

May I recommend this method to you, most exciting!

Regards,

Hugo

 

[David Gauntlett]

1) leadcore can be quite stiff and im not fishing large areas of clean gravel so removing the lead makes it flexible and able to lie better on an uneven bed
2) in the unlikely event of being broken off its safer, no lead means its highly unlikely to get snagged up and i use a drop off inline lead with it so theres no lead to get caught up on any obstruction

If you are replacing the weight of the lead with the weight of the tungsten putty...then I see no reason on earth why it would be any less likely to snag up than the original. It snags up because it hangs down and drags around the the bed of the water, making it a snag magnet. It wouldn't make one jot of difference what material it was that weighed it down.

I realise that putty can slide off under pressure, but the point is once the weight has got it down to the bottom, which enabled it to get tangled, it's too late for that. In fact, if you say you find your original leadcore to be rather too stiff, I would suggest that a stiff material is more likely to slide over a snag, whereas your heavy but flexible version would be far more likely to catch, wrap around and tangle.

I am not just saying this to be argumentative Chris, it just seems that your logic is completely flawed in this....in my opinion.

Cheers, Dave.

 

[Chris Thomson]

As you say Dave , in your opinion.