Stuart Dennis, an experienced angler of some 26 years has, until recently, concentrated mainly on catching tench, his favourite species. In the last two years, however, he has been suffering from carp fever and has realised that carp fishing is far removed from what he has been used to. In spite of his long experience and success with general coarse fishing, where carp are concerned he classes himself as a total novice.

Stuart says, “There are no doubt hundreds of questions we novice carp anglers would like to ask the experts, but unfortunately, for various reasons, we sometimes feel awkward doing so.


Rik and Stuart

“So what I’m going to do is get under the skin of one of our most experienced carp anglers, Big Rik, or Carp Angler, as he’s known on the forum, and shoot all those questions at him that you always wanted to ask, which will, as we go along, be turned into a series of features covering various carp fishing topics.

“As these articles run their course no doubt many questions will arise. So If you’re just getting started, or are an improving carp angler (or an experienced carp angler even, who just wants another opinion) and want to get under the skin of the expert, email me with your carp fishing questions at stuartdennis@msn.com and I’ll go banging on his door without a care in the world and post the results on here!”

PART 5 – HOOKS

Hooks are a funny old thing! Long shanks, short shanks, bent shanks, straight shanks, barbed, micro barbed and barbless. Boilie hooks, particle hooks, corn hooks – you name it we’ve got the lot at our disposal. For many of us vain carp angling tackle tarts as long as its got Nash, Fox or ESP stamped on the packet and the cost is at least 40% more than the usual suspects, we seem to wallow in our own happy contentment. Yes it’s true, even in carp fishing, we love to love a ‘NAME’! (Awww…What I’d do for a signed photo of Terry Hearn!)


Select hooks with care
It’s the same age-old scenario where flooding the market seems to confuse many of us regarding the right choice for the right job! At the end of the day it’s a confidence thing. As far as I’m concerned, if you’re nailing the vast majority of your fish straight from a take and the hook you’re using is proving reliable time and time again, then why change it? In my humble opinion the trick to feeling confident with your hooks can only come about by self field testing. If you use a Brand X Stiff Rig size 7 for a day and you get two runs resulting with one fish on the bank, would you necessarily change your hooks? (let the thinking commence!)

I have been fishing for some 26 years now and apart from my very early stages where a six foot boat rod, a size one hook with at least fifteen maggots pierced straight through the middle did the job, I’ve always been what you would class a ‘thinking angler’. This means always looking to change tactics to suit all occasions.

This thinking approach has gained me many great successes when angling and will continue to do so as I forward my thinking and ideology towards catching carp. Unfortunately, this can also prove frustrating whilst in hot pursuit of my personal best. Let me explain.

Being an experienced specimen hunter for general coarse fish (tench, bream, roach, rudd, etc) it was quite easy to change tactics to suit as I went along. As a rule and as an average, when feeder fishing with a quivertip, I would be refilling my feeder and recasting every 10, 15 or 20 minutes or so if I hadn’t had a bite, checking my baits, fiddling with my set-up, changing hooks, through to adjusting my hooklink, etc. Apply this approach to fishing for carp on the bottom and the end result could be disastrous. Why?

Well, quite simply, we carp anglers will, as a norm, leave our baits out in the water for up to 10 hours as the runs may well be few and far between. So where am I going with this? The fact remains, you need to put in many, many hours at your venue in order to confidently say that a method is successful or that a method is not working. Add to this the feeding patterns, the weather, the water temperature, the baits, the rigs, the time of year and whether or not your wearing bright pink lycra pants and every other element you can think of, you’re left with one hell of a lot of hours of self field testing to do.

So…..in order to feel confident with your hooks and be able to categorically state to yourself that you’ve found the right hook for the right job, can be a painstakingly long process. But hey, you’ve got to break a few eggs to make the perfect omelette right! Although perhaps difficult to follow, my point is this: find a hook that you’re relatively comfortable with, apply many, many hours of testing and then if your confidence starts to slip away to the realms of negativity, try changing the hook to a style and or size that isn’t an extreme difference from the one you’ve been using and then slowly but surely test through the varieties available until you find home!

If anyone was to ask me (a successful carp angler in the making) what would be the best advice you could give to a novice carp angler, then it would be this: Find a rig that works on your venue by continually asking around, start using it, field test it and slowly but surely improve on it to suit the thinking you’ve applied. This my friend, will be classed as ‘Experience’ and there’s no substitute for this!

As you all know by now, me and Carp Angler, aka Big Rik, are great friends, which unfortunately for him, means we talk probably 3-4 times daily (normally him answering my own questions). In talking, he has listed many emails that he’s received asking questions like this: “I’m new to carp fishing, what bait should I use?”, “I’m new to carp fishing what rigs should I use” and so on….If there was text book answer, then I’m sure he would have told me by now, but the fact remains ‘there ain’t!’. You’ve got to think constantly about your approach, you’ve got to garner as much information on your venue as possible and more importantly, you’ve got to set your traps and improve your methods slowly but surely, the end result will be self confidence and experience!

All that being said, I’m now going to pull some information on hooks out of the old boy, lay it out in a simple format for you to follow and hopefully get you to the first rung of the ladder, the rest is up to you, so good luck and here goes.

Big Rik, my confidence has been realised by using ESP Hooks, so for the purpose of this exercise let’s use these as a guide. I use ‘STIFF RIGGER’s’ and ‘RAPTOR’s’. What’s the difference between these two ESP hooks?

Stiff Riggers have an out turned eye and when tied using a stiff hooklink material and in the knotless knot style, they allow the line to exit from the eye in a straighter line, this allows the rig to work in its most efficient manner.

Raptors in a G4 pattern are perfect for pop-ups where you have a supple section of hooklink next to the hook, the longer shank creates a more efficient pop-up rig by enhancing the turning effect.

The T6, which has a shorter shank and a wider gape, is a superb hook for bottom baits and critically balanced baits, but is also a very efficient pop-up hook as well.

I would now like to cover what size hook should be used for what size bait. If we can stick to answering these questions using boilies as a guide the reader should be able to work out what size hook to use for other baits such as tiger nuts or pellets etc. I’d like to attempt this by way of a table for future reference for the reader to refer back to.

HOOK SIZE – BAIT SIZE
MethodBoilie SizeHook Size
Popped-up and Bottom Bait8mm10
Popped-up and Bottom Bait 10mm8
Popped-up and Bottom Bait 12mm8
Popped-up and Bottom Bait 14mm6
Popped-up and Bottom Bait 16mm6
Popped-up and Bottom Bait 18mm6/4
Popped-up and Bottom Bait 20mm4
Popped-up and Bottom Bait 22mm4

The same hook sizes would apply for single, double or even triple baits, the point about the hook size, when used with a hair rig, is that the hook should just protrude from the circumference of the bait. By this I mean that when you view it from directly above, the hook should not be totally obscured by the bait.

The diameter will not change if you increase the number of baits on the hair.

So there you have it, advice from Carp Angler in a nice and simple guide for your future reference. As with all guides, they are set to steer you in the right direction. To fine tune for yourself you’ve got to add your own thinking and of course trial and error and time. All venues are different, hence all tactics required will be different. Think harder, gain your experience by putting in the hours and then hopefully this wondrous hobby of ours will slowly unravel itself to you and will slowly but surely put more fish on the bank!

Finally, I must point out that there is no such thing as a rig that works on a specific venue. There may be a certain approach that has some success and this approach may benefit from a specific rig, but this rig used on the same water using a different method may not benefit from the same level of success.

Taking this a step further, the same approach may not have the same level of success in a different swim on the same venue.

It’s all about using the correct approach and baiting style for that swim and the fish in it and then using the right rig to best capitalise on that particular approach.

We’ll show some different rigs and end tackles in the next article, the experience Stuart so ably describes in the opening paragraph will enable you to judge for yourself what rig and approach to use in a given situation.

If you think you’re struggling to capitalise in a given swim on your local venue, then send the details to Stuart and we’ll try to offer some advice on the best way to tackle that swim.

Now we’ve covered hooks we will be getting under the skin of rigs and end tackle in the next article. If you have any questions that you’d like to put to Carp Angler then send them into stuartdennis@msn.com.

RELATED ARTICLESMORE FROM AUTHOR