How long is your hair ?

[tortoise100]

I know this opens up debate but I seem to have found confidence in almost as short as I can make it ,so the bait is on the back of the hook .
I have been using this with guru QM1 's in size 12 and it seems to work so far.
I have never felt totaly right about a long hair with say 8 mm from the hook to bait but that is just me I am not that experianced .

I know in the ideal world the bait would go on first then you tie the hook with a knotless but I prefer snell knots and these are fiddly at the best of times let alone with cold fingers .

 

[Cakey]

I like mine a gnats knacker off the hook.................

 

[Tilman Bieselt]

This will be not a discussion, but a thread about personal preferences.

I have fished stiff rigs last year (Simple Mono line and coated braid). I don´t remember, when i last fished the braided leader material (Kryston Merlin, Sufix, etc.)

I feel comfortable, when the bait is on the same height ( in line ) with the Hook Bend.

If you are using a braided leader i would recommend you to test your rig by just hold the rod end in your hand and bouncing it around and rolling it on the table, to see, if you get any tangles. I think that is really more important, then some of the theories about how the rig hooks the carp best. Don´t think too much about the Underwater Carp Fishing Videos (or do, because even the "best" rigs didn´t really work there every time)

As long, as you are tangle free, you are doing fine and the rig will work, eventually.

I think that it is more important to have some carp competing for your bait, than the perfect rig. When they are rivalling for the bait, the chances are much better to hook one.

 

[bill2]

I suspect that the answer will vary from place to place and on the prevailing conditions. If you find that you're missing bites, or hooking in the scissors etc, then adjusting the length of your hair can improve how many bites you have, and how strong a hookhold you get. Personally, if i find myself missing bites, or think i'm being 'had', i tend to lenghten my hair a tad and have always felt my luck improved.

 

[Ian Gemson]

I preffer a long hair and to have the hair as supple as possible. If for instance I am using flouro hook lenghts I will lock a soft braided hair under the knotless knot so I have a stiff but invissible hooklength and a free moving natural bait. Short hairs are without doubt effective as I use them all the time when fishing zig rig, however in a zig situation the carp have no other baits in the water to compare the movement with so the bait is the only reference point.

http://lh5.ggpht.com/_1RnN47H9zr8/Sc7Blvi0ghI/AAAAAAAAD20/FWnmIBO3IQk/s576/IMG_4122.CR2.jpg Classic zig rig.


However on the bottom of the lake as the carp moves into the swim over a few free offerings the baits are all washed about by the movment of the carp pectoral fins and its sucling and blowing with its mouth. All of the baits will roll and float naturaly except for your hook bait which has a heavy big hook stuck next to it. You will of course get the hungry/mug carp that just has to have it what ever but the smarter bigger carp will often refuse to take the heavy different looking bait.

http://lh5.ggpht.com/_1RnN47H9zr8/S09Qba8o-VI/AAAAAAAAIkI/NEEHO1u55n4/s576/IMG_6114.JPG
A classic soft /long haired rigs one a resetting ring rig (Hamburger) and one a long hair hippy rig.

 

[Graham Whatmore]

Ian Gemson - "However on the bottom of the lake as the carp moves into the swim over a few free offerings the baits are all washed about by the movment of the carp pectoral fins and its sucling and blowing with its mouth"

This is perfectly true and I suspect tench do the same which accounts for the finicky way they accept freebies but not the hookbait. I am not a carp angler and only an occasional tench angler and never really thought about negating the weight of the hook so the bait rises and falls in the same manner as the feed is there a way of doing this?

I know about floaters and their use of course but that isn't quite the same as having a bait on the bottom that is the same density as the free offerings and behaves in the same way when fish are over it.

 

[Cakey]

Graham you can get over the problem by mixing different size boilies for loose feed..............

 

[Philip]

Graham you can get over the problem by mixing different size boilies for loose feed..............

Yep that's what I would do now too of I was concerned about the fish differentiating my hookbait from the free offerings.

I messed about quite a bit in the past with critically balanced hookabits..by that I mean balancing the weight of the bait so that it becomes heavier, lighter or even neutral buoyancy in the water. Graham asks how can you do that ...well there are a quite a few ways for example with bolies you can add ingredients to make them heavier or lighter (someone like Frothy could prob put you right on those). However what I used to do was stick a bit of foam on the hair with the bait and trim it back till the weight was spot on.

Nowadays I have gone off the idea of critically balanced baits for 2 reasons...the first is that although on some very pressured waters I suspect Carp may differentiate hookbaits by wafting their fins I think for the majority of Carp it just does not happen. More likely is that the hookbait is simply wafted out of the feeding zone rather than the Carp making a conscious decision to identify it.

The second reason is that i am coming more and more round to the idea that keeping a bait fishing effectively as long as possible is just as important as making a rig super subtle. Its all very well having these mega finesse rigs but if the first fish that comes along has the hookbait wafting around all over the place and ending up tangled then your not going to catch. I recon it may be better to sacrifice some finesse to keep it fishing as long as possible until the fish simply can't resist it anymore and makes a mistake.

 

[Tilman Bieselt]

Its all very well having these mega finesse rigs but if the first fish that comes along has the hookbait wafting around all over the place and ending up tangled then your not going to catch. I recon it may be better to sacrifice some finesse to keep it fishing as long as possible until the fish simply can't resist it anymore and makes a mistake.

My point exactly.

There is nothing more frustrating (and "counterproductive"), than reeling in in the morning and finding your rig all tangled and a leaf covering the hookpoint.

That´s why i fish stiff rigs. i maybe had one tangle last year and i have been fishing a good deal (It sums up to at least 70 days).

And this is the reason why i have been supposing you may "play" with the tied rig around, to see, what happens to it. If it tangles, it will do the same under water, maybe even more so.

 

[Carpy Kev]

I've found I've been more successful with fairly long hairs and use a small stick/pva bag to prevent tangles.

 

[tortoise100]

I didn't think carp could see all that well in allot of situations .
My local pool is down to around 6 inches visability at the bank so it must be pitch black down at 8ft.

Has been good to read that some have good results on a long hair or even lengthening the hair on a hard day .

I am more likley to blame the long hair and change for a shorter one .

Also I did not realise that hooking in the sicssors was not desirable ! does that indicate a case of only just hooked it ?

 

[Beaker]

I preffer a long hair and to have the hair as supple as possible. If for instance I am using flouro hook lenghts I will lock a soft braided hair under the knotless knot so I have a stiff but invissible hooklength and a free moving natural bait. Short hairs are without doubt effective as I use them all the time when fishing zig rig, however in a zig situation the carp have no other baits in the water to compare the movement with so the bait is the only reference point.

http://lh5.ggpht.com/_1RnN47H9zr8/Sc7Blvi0ghI/AAAAAAAAD20/FWnmIBO3IQk/s576/IMG_4122.CR2.jpg Classic zig rig.


However on the bottom of the lake as the carp moves into the swim over a few free offerings the baits are all washed about by the movment of the carp pectoral fins and its sucling and blowing with its mouth. All of the baits will roll and float naturaly except for your hook bait which has a heavy big hook stuck next to it. You will of course get the hungry/mug carp that just has to have it what ever but the smarter bigger carp will often refuse to take the heavy different looking bait.

http://lh5.ggpht.com/_1RnN47H9zr8/S09Qba8o-VI/AAAAAAAAIkI/NEEHO1u55n4/s576/IMG_6114.JPG
A classic soft /long haired rigs one a resetting ring rig (Hamburger) and one a long hair hippy rig.

You try and critically balance you bottom bait by inserting some cork in a hole that has been drilled out of the hookbait.

---------- Post added at 22:33 ---------- Previous post was at 22:30 ----------

Sorry I forgot(its old age you know)I use a fairly long hair wether with flurocarbon,mono or braid.

 

[bill2]

I have read many times that the adoption of the hair rig is unquestionably the single greatest development in angling in living memory. At the time it was believed to be so effective because it allowed the bait to act naturally. Since then new ideas have evolved, but i believe that that central tenet still applies. A long (ish) supple hair will let your bait behave as naturally as is feasably possible, and the clever people have developed rig's that help turn bites into photos

 

[Ian Gemson]

"I didn't think carp could see all that well in allot of situations" I think that a fish that has evolved over many millions of years always living in muddy unclear water can see a whole lot better than you think they can ! . I saw a study once and it was stated that fish have a greater spectrum of site than humans in as much as they had far red vision to cope with the dark and murky waters.

"There is nothing more frustrating (and "counterproductive"), than reeling in the morning and finding your rig all tangled and a leaf covering the hook point."

The rig was tangled because you did not set the rig up properly before the cast and the leaf on the hook more than likely was hooked on the retrieve.

http://lh3.ggpht.com/_1RnN47H9zr8/SgAAUuGU8WI/AAAAAAAAEvA/yiAPfx53wUQ/s912/IMG_4716.JPG
A typical long hair rig with the bait prevented from tangling by simply pulling the rig through a small PVA bag.

http://lh3.ggpht.com/_1RnN47H9zr8/SVFEbZE4NCI/AAAAAAAAC5Y/iHh1A92RqGE/s640/IMG_3334.CR2.jpg

A typical winter low feed rig with a PVA bag slid on the hair between the boilie and the hook.

One idea I have been playing with is to set up a knotless knot on a long shank hook with a hook size on bigger than I would normally use for the size of bait I am using and them get some Gardner black hi buoyancy foam and stick the foam to the shank of the hook. I them whittle down the foam until the hook only just sinks.

 

[Tilman Bieselt]

I had used Stringers to avoid the tangles and my hypothesis is, that it was the Carp playing around with the bait.

If i reeled in, because the cast was bad, i had not the problems with tangles, so i guess that it was not happening when casting.

 

[maver man]

I proffer longer hair when using boilies simply because its a bigger bait but also because i find a boilie presented father from the hook gives better hooking capability and when using other baits like buoyant corn or pop-up i have them fairly short near the eye so it makes the lightest part of the hook (the eye) even lighter so it doesnt reduce the heaviness of the hook point also it may actually emphasize the actual weight of the hook point by taking out any other weight near the eye.

 

[bill2]

Carp can see in both infra-red and ultraviolet, and in low light conditions too; and apparently Pink is the last colour from the spectrum to dissapear underwater! (How do they know these things?!) With regards to hair lengths, I think it's important to remember that Carps teeth are at the back of it's throat. Anything considered edible will be moved in that direction until alarm bells starts ringing. By then, several inches your hair rig and your bait are allready actually in it's mouth and this is when rig mechanics come into play. e.g. the KD rig is designed to make the hookpoint heavier so it falls into prime hooking position: and the blowback rig so that as the ring slides back up the shank of the hook, the hookpoint becomes heavier drops down into position, and also the momentum of the bait being ejected actually drives the point home! Thats the idea anyway. Whether they actually work as such is another thing! To my mind, if you want to use really short hair's, why bother with them at all?, just spear your bait onto the hook. Alternatively, let hairs do what they were designed for.

P.S. I also use what is effectively a short hair for popups etc, (usually a D rig) Now I'm wondering if there are other ways and means! I feel a headache coming on!

 

[Tilman Bieselt]

We have to take too many circumstances into consideration to evaluate one individual outcome (because , as many of you are aware carp have different behaviour when feeding, not only individually, but depending on the type of baiting method and bait type, water temperature, etc.)

If you use a longer hair, do you use a longer hooklength as well ?

I usually use a hooklength of 4 to 5" inches when using the stiff rig. I may be trying a longer hooklength this year and maybe peeling off the coating of the hair part, too.
I will fish a different water and maybe the fish don´t feed in the same way as those i fished for the last two years.

 

[quickcedo]

I know this opens up debate but I seem to have found confidence in almost as short as I can make it ,so the bait is on the back of the hook .
I have been using this with guru QM1 's in size 12 and it seems to work so far.
I have never felt totaly right about a long hair with say 8 mm from the hook to bait but that is just me I am not that experianced .

I know in the ideal world the bait would go on first then you tie the hook with a knotless but I prefer snell knots and these are fiddly at the best of times let alone with cold fingers .

I too prefer not to use the knotless not. If you go into any good fly fishing shop they will show how to whip finish a fly. I use this technique to tie my hairs, using very supple material, it also allows me to tie varius length hairs to suit the situation/ bait. My pref. is for long hairs and have caught with the bait up to 2 inches from the bend of the hook.

 

[Tilman Bieselt]

Or just type "whip finish" or whip finishing" in the youtube search.

I was thinking about making use of my fly tying experience, too. I thought about doing a few D-Rigs, not about tying the hair in fly fishing style, though.

Thanks for the information and inspiration, mark !