It came to me by accident one miserable winter's day, as I tried in vain to
lob my baits across a flooded river into the mouth of a far bank boatyard.
Every other time I heaved the rig skywards, the bomb slid back up the line
as it flew towards its target. By the time it landed, weight and bait were
five or six feet apart, so by the time I'd tightened down properly and set
the drop-off indicator, I'd actually pulled the bait out of the area I
wanted to fish and into the main flow, where I knew I couldn't even catch a
cold.
In desperation, I bit the trace off and threaded a rig stop and bead back up
the line, before replacing the lead and business end. Sliding the stop down
to within 6 inches or so of the trace swivel stopped bomb and bait from
separating on the cast, meaning all I had to do was tighten up a few turns
to set the indicators and I was fishing where I wanted - without dragging
the bait yards away from that inviting little slack.
I know what you're thinking. What if they feel the lead and drop it as soon
as that rig stop hits the weight. Weighing it up, I didn't have a lot of
choice. Get one cast in four or five in the right place and risk losing
baits and scaring the pike further into the boatyard out of casting range
with the repeated disturbance of lead and bait smacking into the water, or
get it in the right place first time and bank on hitting any takes before
the fish smelt a rat and dropped the bait.
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Can bolt rigs catch more big pike
than sensitive running rigs?
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I had three fish to 12lbs or so that afternoon. All of them came from the
mouth of that boatyard and they all screamed off at a rate of knots as soon
as they took the bait. All three were hooked in the scissors by the bottom
hook on the trace as well, so by the time I slung the gear in the car to
drive home, I was starting to wonder whether I was onto something.
Carp anglers have been using fixed and semi-fixed bolt rigs for years, of
course. Despite numerous permutations of hook length and end rig, the basic
principle remains the same - when the fish takes the bait, the sudden
resistance caused by the lead drives the hook in.
If it worked with carp, which are arguably a much more sophisticated fish,
why shouldn't it work with pike, I wondered. Over the last few weeks of the
season I began experimenting with backstops, setting them at different
distances behind free running leads. Over the course of several sessions, I
hardly missed a single take. And instead of the hesitant
stop-go-is-it-on-or-isn't-it takes usually associated with end of season
fish, they were all full-blooded runs.
The backstop and heavy lead approach has another advantage. Set correctly,
I'm convinced it can help you avoid deep hooking. Here's why. Ever wondered
why a pike runs with the bait..? It's simple - as anyone who's ever watched
one pick up a discarded deadbait in the margins can tell you. The pike
almost always grabs a bait across the middle and as it moves off, it flares
its gills and uses the rush of water through its mouth and gill slits to
help drive the bait into its throat.
Unless you're using a tiny bait, or it's a very big pike, it has to move
with the bait to begin swallowing it. The trouble with letting runs develop
on bottom-fished baits is you can rarely gauge how big the pike which has
taken your bait is. A three or four pound jack might have to swim a few
yards or more to swallow the bait and hooks down. A double figure fish or
better can swallow even a big bait down in much less.
With the bolt rig, the fish pricks itself on one or the other of your hooks
as soon as it starts to move. Feeling the resistance or the hooks, it panics
and bolts; hooking itself in the process.
I've yet to deep-hook a pike bolt rigging. I'll admit I've lost a few, where
the hooks have pulled out on the way in - presumably because they've lodged
in the skin on the very edge of the mouth or even caught round a tooth,
rather than penetrating a more secure spot. I've also missed takes from time
to time, but you do on any rig.
The bolt rig is nothing special, usually just a 2oz bomb attached with a
snap link bead, with a couple of soft beads above the trace swivel and a rig
stop and another bead six inches to a foot back up the line.
Before you dismiss this out of hand as another load of nonsense from one of
those Norfolk nutters, consider this. How resistance-free are those
so-called low res run rings and beads..? Once you've got 20 or 30 yards of
line bowed out across a drain or river, the pike still has to move all that
to trigger your bite indicator.
Bombs and rings sink into silt or bottom debris. Even those stems, with
little polyballs on the top, are a bit misleading. They sit up, so the
makers' blurb goes, allowing the line free passage. Oh really..? What
happens when you tighten up..? That's right, it keels over and lies flat to
the bottom like any other bomb, bead, link etc.
Few rigs are truly resistance free. You need a weight of some sort to anchor
your bait and provide something to tighten indicators down to, in order to
avoid deep hooking. Instead of making vain attempts to eliminate resistance,
why not use it to our advantage to create a self-hooking rig which reduces
the chances of a fish swallowing the bait down..?
Paul Williams
