Zig or ‘off the lead fishing’ is by no means a new method for catching carp, it has been used for many years by forward thinking anglers. It is only in more recent years, however, that the true potential has started to be recognized and the method is being explored in much more depth, with tackle refined and techniques honed.
The real key to the development of this method has come with the realization that carp will eat a bit of black foam, or something similarly inedible, in mid-water, even at night. Once you can get your head around the fact that you don’t actually even need to use an edible hook bait – just something buoyant enough to hold up the hook link – a whole new world of possibilities is opened up…
My own zig experience began some ten years ago, and indeed my first carp on a zig was also my first thirty-pounder. Having woken at dawn on a summer’s morning to find the carp obviously feeding on the top, but not having my floater kit handy, I tied up a 13-foot hook link with a pop-up attached. It didn’t take long for it to rattle off, and I ended up bagging two that day. That gave me the all important confidence I needed to experiment further and it has formed an important part of my armoury ever since, as single baits through spring, but most usually as a substitute for floater fishing during the summer months.
This is a way of fishing zigs that is seriously underused, and can be just as exciting as well as more effective than floater fishing. Where carp have become wary of being fished for on the top, a zig bait amongst the mixers on, or just below, the surface can be a real edge. Finding the correct depth to fish your zigs on the day is critical and he who gets the depth spot on will get the most bites, whether it be on the surface, just below, or two feet down.
Likewise, although the fish will feed over a wide area, there are always areas in the swim where the fish are more comfortable and will feed with that little bit more confidence. Spending time carefully watching the fish feed and recasting as necessary is very important. Getting a bait in one of these zones can make a big difference to the amount of takes.
Hook baits for zigging are very much a personal choice. As I mentioned earlier some people find it hard to use something that they don’t regard as bait – after all, how often are we told how important it is to use something that the carp want to actually eat?
For me, bait choice for my zigs was always a piece of foam, a cork ball, or a trimmed down pop-up, not necessarily trying to imitate the freebies but relying on the feeding carp simply grabbing it as they searched for mixers. Choice of freebies is down to the individual and I have done really well in the past using Sonubaits oily floaters in the smaller sizes. However, this year I will also be using NashBait’s new Riser Pellet (once I have fed the gulls off with larger mixers!) These tiny pellets don’t all float. Some of them drift down through the water, hovering and rising again when disturbed. To my mind this creates an ideal feeding situation for fishing zigs, where the carp are picking off food items below the surface as well as on it.
What I had never really considered before last year was that a zig could be equally effective without introducing any freebies but just fishing it amongst nature’s own free offerings. It was on my first trip to Kevin Nash’s Church Pool last April, with a mega fly hatch obviously in progress, that I decided to try one of the foam trout flies that had been sitting unused in my tackle box for years. I picked a little black number, which I though most resembled the tiny black flies that were emerging from the lake, and set the depth at a little over halfway off bottom. I had long been meaning to try these alternative hook baits and this seemed like a good opportunity to try something a little bit different.
Now I knew that the fish in there took zigs; in fact the thick weed made it the only way to present a bait in places, but what I didn’t know was that coincidently Jerry Hammond had actually caught the big common at over 50lb the previous week on a prototype fly zig. I was working for Advanced Carp Fishing back then and for obvious reasons Kevin and the boys were keeping some of the details of that particular capture quiet!
It didn’t take long, just a few hours, but I was soon staring at a 32lb mirror in the bottom of the net that had taken my fly fished six feet off bottom. I immediately switched my other rods over to zigs and over the course of the trip I had several more bites on various trout flies, but the limitations of the hooks that these flies were tied on became painfully apparent. I had two of them snap on me during the fight and both times the fish I was attached to felt very large indeed…Big fish, weedy water and fine wire hooks do not mix – I was gutted!
Nevertheless, although there was some fine-tuning still to do I figured that there was something in the method. Perhaps the thing that excited me most was the sheer novelty of catching big carp on tiny trout flies. The carp were obviously used to picking off insects and invertebrates from the mid layers and I scoured the fly fishing sites for suitable flies, buoyant enough to hold up a long hook link and with hooks that were up to the job of landing big carp.
Although I had missed the prime zig time of spring, armed with some new patterns I persevered over the summer and bagged a couple of decent carp from different venues, neither of them particularly regular visitors to the bank. One of these was just about the quickest bite I have ever had too.
Having come across a group of fish milling about near the surface in the middle of a large bay, I had hurriedly tied up a 10ft hook link with a ‘Booby’ attached and fired it out near the fish. I felt the lead hit the bottom, and as I sunk the rod tip to sink the line the rod was practically ripped out of my hands, much to the surprise of the anglers opposite who had just watched me cast out. It had taken all of three seconds to get a bite, luckily my mate was on hand to set up the net. All the way through the battle I was convinced that I must have foul hooked the fish, but when I finally netted the scaly mirror upon inspection it had nailed the fly, probably as it flashed past it.
I was really beginning to think that perhaps an imitation had the edge over just a bit of foam or cork, but I still wasn’t happy that the hooks were really up to the job when conditions got tough, thry were just too fine in the wire. What I needed were these flies to be tied on proper carp hooks…
When I joined Nash I was naturally delighted to find that Kevin and Alan had been working hard on different prototype flies, mounted on Nash’s excellent Fang hooks. My prayers had been answered, and I was excited to try out the ‘Zig Bugs’ as they became known. The development process was rigorous and lengthy, with input from Jerry Hammond, myself and various other anglers who had been making their own flies. The right materials had to be found in order for these tiny imitations to hold up the thick wire carp hooks and several prototypes were rejected, but eventually there were six patterns that everyone was happy with. Nash Operations Manager Alan Blair was soon getting amongst the fish on his local syndicate, and the hype was beginning to build.
I was given a bag of prototypes to give to the consultants that I went out on the bank with, and the Bugs did the business from the off. I handed one of the Attractor Beetles to Jed Kent whilst out shooting a feature for Maximum Carp, and just 20 minutes later he had his first fish of the session. Whether it made a difference that it was an imitation rather Jed’s normal piece of foam it is hard to say, but it definitely kick-started a great session for Jed.
It was all well and good watching other people catch on the Bugs, but what I really wanted was to put them to the test myself. So confident was I that they would catch more than their fair share that my good mate and fellow Kingsmead bailiff ‘Not Famous’ Tel and I have had a bet. I would use imitations, he would use black foam, and whoever catches more this season gets dinner bought by the other. It’s a bit of fun, but quite often we fish side by side on K1 so it would be a good test of the effectiveness of the Bugs.
Being a deep gravel pit, the K1 fish have been slow to wake up, but last week I hooked my first of the season on the Zig Bug Louse. It felt like a really big fish, perhaps even one of the ‘A-Team’, but unfortunately after beating me up and stripping 50m of line the hook link parted. ‘Not Famous’ had better luck than me on his standard black foam zig, also hooking one but actually landing his, a 28lb mirror. So the score stands at a take each, but 0-1 in the catch picture stakes.
Still, as I write this there’s plenty of time yet, and I’m confident that I won’t be the one paying for dinner come the end of the season!
