• You need to be a registered member of Barbel Fishing World to post on these forums. Some of the forums are hidden from non-members. Please refer to the instructions on the ‘Register’ page for details of how to join the new incarnation of BFW...

We have had hair length, what are your thoughts on rig length?

18 inches as standard. Increase or decrease for specific reasons.
For example using advanced riigs or specific baiting strategies, it sometimes pays to shorten the rig to six inches.
For difficult days in clear water, increasing the rig length to 3' plus of fluoro helps.
 
For the Trent i use anything from 12" to 6 foot, it all depends on the level, time of year, pressure etc. Sometimes you get the Barbs laying back off the feeder and then again i sometimes get them attacking the feeder as soon as it hits bottom, when a hort hook length comes in handy. For small rivers i just havent got enough experience to comment.


Jon
 
12" to a maximum of about 3' for me. Much longer and I get too many tangles for my liking. However, I don't use feeders very often. Leads and PVA mesh bags are my usual.
 
Fish a small river, and the bit I fish does not get a lot of pressure. Started off using about 8 inches of braid. Worked well then things slowed down. Went for a longer braid rig length, which caught but started getting tangles. Now use about a foot and a half of flurocarbon and a short length of braid at the end. If it is filthy and pushing through I go back to a very short braid length. No bolt rigs, all running rigs, smallest lead I can get away with.
Shaun, bored, smacked up ribs
 
Really depends on how I'm fishing. As a few examples of my thinking...

If I'm on the lead over a baited area or using bags then probably about 18in, coated braid with the last couple of inches stripped. I'm expecting the hookbait to be in amongst the free offering so don't often feel the need to play around with the length too much.

Using a big piece of meat when it's pushing through and I want to nail it down then I'll probably shorten that.

If I was on the feeder and feeding a particle such as maggot then I would start around 18in and adjust to suit. No bites I would probably lengthen, anything up to 4 or 5ft as sometimes the fish can hang back. Destroyed bait when I'm not seeing the bites then I would shorten maybe to as short as a couple of inches. Another thing I might try in this situation when I'm not getting bites is to move the feeder down the swim, go back to 18in and start the process again.

On the feeder with crumb (ie no real food items) then I would probably stay around 18in to 2ft but fish another rod below.

Regards
Paul
 
For the middle Trent I have used 9 inch rigs in low flow to good effect when fishing pellet wrapped in paste, increasing to 2 foot in heavier flows. If I was fishing the feeder, the minimum length would be two foot pinning the rig down with coiled lead wire.

Sometimes the contents of the feeder, for finer or larger baits, would also alter the rig length.

Cheers, Jon
 
Very interesting to see that the 2 Jon's approaches vary so much yet they are fishing the same river and both catch their fair share.

Food for thought

Trevor
 
Back
Top