How about this for a mixed bag>

[nicepix]

Not called the 'method' rig, but back around 1970 I saw barbel anglers on the Wharfe fishing with short 2" hook lengths, casters as bait and large heavy feeders crammed with breadcrumb and casters. They would cast out, let it settle and if no bite inside a minute bring it out, rebait and cast out. Barbel became attuned to swimfeeders = food and would knock the feeders to empty them.

Around the same time a company brought out a new groundbait feeder concept where you put a hollow round shaped piece of dried groundbait mix on a plastic holder. After filling the hollow groundbait with maggots you attached it to the plastic bit and cast out. Apparently the groundbait dissolved in a short time. It never caught on.

Flavoured bread paste, using honey and vanilla has been around for donkey's years and some of the really old authors mention using fruit as a bait for carp.

[cg74]

Originally Posted by barbelboi

Colin, the ‘fixed lead’, ‘bare hook’ and ‘bent hook were described by Ron in an article he wrote for the Angling Telegraph in 1974. He took no credit for these methods as they had been used in SA for many years previous.
Jerry

Fixed leads have been around since anglers have cast leads into water; if its fixed leads as a part of a bolt-rig that you're referring to, then for it to function effectively, it should incorprate a hair-rigged bait. Otherwise it's like having a steak and ale pie, without the steak.....

The bent hook-rig wasn't exactly the best rig ever, what with double hooking and lip damaged by chaffing.

Bare hook-rig, I was under the impression this was an early name for a hair-rig?

---------- Post added at 17:19 ---------- Previous post was at 17:05 ----------

Originally Posted by Philip

Ah good, so you have clearly heard about the Australians too ! ...well done that man. Indeed, I believe Australian anglers fishing for Murrey Cod where using balls of bait molded round leads from a very long time back and way before it was even a twinkle in UK or S African anglers eyes !

The use of “flavorings” I am also quite sure could be traced back even further if anyone could be bothered to try , to the point where I suspect it would be almost impossible to point the finger at any one person and say they came up with the original idea of adding a flavor to a bait.

...Actually I have it on good authority that "Ug the fish catcher” , a Neanderthal cave man who was actually the first ever rod and line angler on planet earth, who without the access to things such as lead or other manufactured materials in all probability reverted to using clay or some other heavy mud found on the river bank as a weighting agent to get his bait down in the water. The action of the mud dissolving and breaking away from the main mudball once immersed in water probably had a fish attracting quality in its own right. Ug had unwittingly invented the method feeder !!! And given his mud ball would almost certainly have been fixed rather than sliding on his line, he also invented the bolt rig !

…Dare I say that as Ugs hands were surely tainted with Mammoth dung, his bait would have been “flavored” with this powerful attractant and thus he can also lay reasonable claim to have invented bait flavors.

Take a bow Ug…its all thanks to you....

Good post Philip, though I was told it was Ug's cousin Urr that first used a rod and line?

You'd better watch yourself, as dissing Ron can be the catalyst to drag his obtuse lackey off of facebook.

[Peter Jacobs]

Originally Posted by cg74

You'd better watch yourself, as dissing Ron can be the catalyst to drag his obtuse lackey off of facebook

Ain't that the truth . . . . .

[barbelboi]

[QUOTE=cg74;1165374]Fixed leads have been around since anglers have cast leads into water; if its fixed leads as a part of a bolt-rig that you're referring to, then for it to function effectively, it should incorprate a hair-rigged bait. Otherwise it's like having a steak and ale pie, without the steak.....

The bent hook-rig wasn't exactly the best rig ever, what with double hooking and lip damaged by chaffing.

Bare hook-rig, I was under the impression this was an early name for a hair-rig?

---------- Post added at 17:19 ---------- Previous post was at 17:05 ----------



Colin, I answered your question - if you don't agree with the answer, or angling techniques of the time, possibly you should familiar yourself with angling reports of the time before commenting. This was from the Angling Telegraph May 17 1974 and you can read a further two pages about it in Kevin Clifford's 1992 book 'A History of Carp Fishing'

" The tackle required is pretty straightforward - rod, line and reel to suit the water you are fishing. The lead must be a heavy one, preferably over 2oz. The hook is a size 4 (remember that the bait was a single grain of corn), one of those odd-looking, deeply incurved jobs made by Edgar Sealey. Those hooks have played no small role in the tremendous success of the 'trap' in South Africa over recent years. Do I have to say that the hook must be sharpened as much as possible? I pointed out earlier that the lead must be heavy. Here lies one of the secrets of the success of the 'trap'. The weight of the lead acts as a preliminary device for setting the hook. ..........................(loads more not relevant to question)...........................................then in 9 cases out of ten the sharp point will lodge somewhere in the fishes mouth, and on feeling the resistance the carp will bolt. The weight of the lead will then act as further resistance to embed the hook, followed by the resistance of the reel. The only indication usually that an angler has hooked a fish is by finding that the line is being removed from the reel at a remarkable rate of knots"


Jerry

[Hugh Bailey 2]

Originally Posted by Ron The Hat Clay

You have Dick Walker on the brain mate!

No - it was a few thinking anglers who were members of the Rand Piscatorial Association in Johannesburg ca 1967. The concept of moulding groundbait around a lead on a paternoster rig is old. The idea that you place the hookbait amongst the moulded groundbait goes back to about 1967 when I first saw it being used by the late Brian Unteidt, who was probably the most effective catcher of big carp I have ever met.

Hmm - I seem to remember Mr Crabtree moulding a ball of groundbait around his bait when carp fishing - granted is wasn't round the lead but almost exactly the same and this was before 1967. Actually I'll check later.

[flightliner]

Not trying to be funny here but in the interest of angling history being recorded as it happened read an edition of the angling telegraph back in the sixties and you will see that it was Colin graham the angling journalist/auther who trialed a self hooking device on the river Witham at the Bain end near Dogdyke when fishing for bream. Predates any 1974 intro of a self hooking concept.
If its in print otherwise its simply incorrect

[redfin123]

Originally Posted by flightliner

Not trying to be funny here but in the interest of angling history being recorded as it happened read an edition of the angling telegraph back in the sixties and you will see that it was Colin graham the angling journalist/auther who trialed a self hooking device on the river Witham at the Bain end near Dogdyke when fishing for bream. Predates any 1974 intro of a self hooking concept.
If its in print otherwise its simply incorrect

I was on the witham myself in the sixtes and your dead right about colin testing that rig, can,t remember whether or not it was successful though.

[flightliner]

Originally Posted by redfin123

Quote:
Originally Posted by flightliner
Not trying to be funny here but in the interest of angling history being recorded as it happened read an edition of the angling telegraph back in the sixties and you will see that it was Colin graham the angling journalist/auther who trialed a self hooking device on the river Witham at the Bain end near Dogdyke when fishing for bream. Predates any 1974 intro of a self hooking concept.
If its in print otherwise its simply incorrect

I was on the witham myself in the sixtes and your dead right about colin testing that rig, can,t remember whether or not it was successful though.

You to Redfin- good.
I think it was perhaps the general size and strength of pull from those Witham bream back then that may or may not have been strong enough to spring the trap that perhaps led to it not being generally accepted by the lads on fenland rivers but the fact remains that it was a self hooking mechanism that predates others that are said to have been the original concept.
Maybe if they had tried it out on some easy carp water where the required "pull" from a taking fish was strong enough it would be the generally accepted method for many a big fish man today.
Its also correct when others here speak of methods akin to the method where short hooklinks were used.
Back in the very early seventies when I was into match angling wasp grub was heavily used on the Trent with the feeder.If you were drawn with it say on the wierfield at Holme marsh you had swims solid with chub that would give you missed bites that nearly took your rod off the rest.
Anglers were quick to cotton on to the fact that the chub were taking the feeder in their mouthes in a feeding frenzy. By using three inch hooklinks with a feeder inline and their rods up in the air they took all of those ghost bites. The angle off the line to the feeder was around seventy degrees making it impossible for a taking fish to do nothing else but pull against the feeder, that was on the Trent-- I have little doubt that it was used by anglers on the severn for just the same reasons---

[stu_the_blank]

Originally Posted by flightliner

Anglers were quick to cotton on to the fact that the chub were taking the feeder in their mouthes in a feeding frenzy

Long time ago, but I seem to remember somebody suggesting that you should put a decent size hook in the swimfeeder!(I would imagine it would have to be fixed to the outside).

Anybody caught a fish using the swimfeeder as bait!!!!

Would it have been classed as an artificial? Certainly makes plastic corn look like a natural by comparison!

Stu

[flightliner]

Stu, In those days with the waspgrub and very short hooklink many (me included) simply put the hook n bait into the bottom of the feeder with the rest of the free offerings and used a little crumb as a plug, on the bottom it came out and rested right inside the little pile of freebies when it was all discharged. Later in the nineties on the Trent when it was all but deserted I was taking lots of Barbel with a very similer rig, this time a paternostered job but the hooklink dropped thro the feeder so it protruded about three or four inches below. Again the same effect as before with the hook laying amongst the discharged bait. Deadly on the day, just another "method" method thats better on running water. I wrote about it in an article I did in the Angling Star sometime before year 2000 if you can find the issue all the diagrams are there to see.