THE MEATBALL RIG

Meatballs are great barbel baits but used straight from the can they are soft in consistency and therefore not easy to keep on the hook. A few years ago I devised this simple rig that utilises a baitband.

You simply tie a knotless-knot hair rig, but instead of a hair you have a small loop. You then thread a suitably-sized baitband through the loop and then back through itself. Stretch the band wide with two fingers and a thumb, insert the meatball, and then allow it to gently close on the meatball.

The rig allows you to cast the same meatball several times and leaves the hook free to give maximum hooking power and penetration.

Some anglers, since seeing the rig, have adapted it to use pole elastic instead of a baitband. It can also be used to fish stiff paste baits and other baits not suitable for conventional hair-rigging.

About the Rigs Page

The Rigs Page is a library of features to illustrate all those rigs that will be useful to both beginners and experienced anglers.

The rigs can be extremely simple and well known, or very complicated and little known, it doesn’t matter providing they make some kind of sense and have a really practical application.

It could be a standard running leger rig that a beginner will appreciate seeing in pictures, or a very complicated anti-eject carp rig that the experienced carp angler would like to see.

If you wish to contribute a rig to this section please remember that the emphasis is on illustration rather than words. Good line drawings are fine in the absence of photographs. Please send to graham@fishingmagic.com

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