Aren't all rigs self hooking to some extent?

Even the finest line being used to freeline a tiny piece of bread has some resistance to a taking fish thus has some self hooking capability?

Hence isn't the going 'semi fixed bolt rig' for all species and all seasons that many of us love/hate simply a variation on what we already have? It's just more efficient at self hooking than other methods, but all those other methods are still self hooking to some degree, are they not?

So should A.N.Other decry the use of deliberate semi fixed bolt rigs, as not being sporting or being an easy option or whatever, surely they're actually doing it themselves, to some extent, whatever rig they're using?

Hence what A.N.Other is really actually moaning about is the degree of a rigs' self hooking capability not the fact that it's self hooking per se?

I won't decry self hooking rigs - but not all rigs have a self hooking capability......

e.g. If a hook is embedded in a cube of luncheon meat and freelined, the hook needs to be pulled manually through the cube.

If you mean heavy feeders on a running ledger type effort - agree whole heartedly....

but does it really matter....

My most fluky 5lb chub came to freelined meat - my reel had over ran (was using a centrepin), by the time I had managed to get all the line organised and untangled all the wind knots, grass etc - as I reeled in I was aware that there was something alive on the other end..... a very confused and disgruntled chub - (not self hooked, i did strike instinctivley)....... did i throw it back in disgust at the thought I had not seen the bite? hell no!! It was carefully weighed, photographed, recorded and valued for the great fish it was

chav professor said:

I won't decry self hooking rigs - but not all rigs have a self hooking capability...... e.g. If a hook is embedded in a cube of luncheon meat and freelined, the hook needs to be pulled manually through the cube.

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Yes but Chav even in that example if the fish takes meat and runs off away from the rod it could hook itself once the line becomes tight and pulls the hook through the meat without the angler doing anything so you could say even that setup has self hooking capabilities...

Hempseed float-fishers have tried all sorts of odd floats to try to increase the likelihood of a fish that's actually got the bait in its mouth hooking itself as it turns away, and I don't recall any ethical debates back then. Anything that helped sort real bites out from "shot" or "phantom" bites was welcome with open arms - or would have been, had one of them actually worked.
Wilf Cutting, who held the roach recoerd before Bill Penney with a (Yorkshire!) fish of 3lb 10oz, used, on windy days, to use a quill with an un-carved champagne cork on it to search the water with a couple of lobworms on a size 6 hook, which must have been a pretty effective bolt rig. I don't recall any accounts of him being sniped at, either.
Most of my rigs seem to be self-unhooking, but that isn't by design and I certainly don't try to make a virtue of it.

One of the most devastating takes I ever had came on the second most self-awarely restricted technique - fly-fishing (Upstream-only fly being the foremost).
Something that I can only assume was travelling fast, and at right-angles to my line, hammered a Cove PTN so hard that it broke the 6lb dropper before I could strike. Both self-hooking AND self-releasing (sort of)!

The short answer is NO!

Whilst there is always a chance that any rig will allow a fish to self-hook against the resistance of the float, leger weight, line, rod tip etc. it's only rigs designed to do this - bolt rigs and method feeders - that actually achieve this for more than a tiny proportion of takes.

If you don't believe me then fish a match against someone with identical standard float setups for roach or dace except that you are not allowed to strike. I can't see you winning!

I do not see the 'bolt-rig' as a great leveller. I can see its purpose clearly for carp. But who could question the effectiveness of floater fishing, or margin fishing where a strike is required.

If all you did was use the bolt rig - I would consider that you could be missing out on a lot of fish......

But it works conversely, sometimes by not bolt-rigging you could miss out on fish.

The bolt rig IMO is a string to the bow, nothing more............

Yes, the most common self hooking rigs are created by wet fly and lure anglers. All you have to do is tighten.

As regards coarse fish, the roach, tench, bream, carp and barbel are the species that are most likely to be caught on types of bolt rigs; in fact most fish of the Cyprinid family. Roach are notorious for mouthing a bait and then spitting it out and what certainly works with these fish is the short link paternoster, varieties of which are called the "dink dink rig".

One of the deadliest still water roach rigs I have used is similar to the above but with a length of pole elastic tied into the line. What happens then is that the rig is cast out, normally a block end feeder filled with maggots and then everything is wound tight against a quiver tip or a weighted swinger. It is important that you wind to the point where any further pressure would cause the feeder to spring forward, helped by the pole elastic causing the hook to embed itselself in the fishes mouth. Either the swinger drops down or the quiver tip springs back, both signifying a bite.

The upstream feeder also works in a similar way. Both are self hooking rigs.

jack sprat said:

Re: Aren't all rigs self hooking to some extent? The short answer is NO!

Whilst there is always a chance that any rig will allow a fish to self-hook against the resistance of the float, leger weight, line, rod tip etc. it's only rigs designed to do this - bolt rigs and method feeders - that actually achieve this for more than a tiny proportion of takes.

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So the short answer is really yes.

For even a tiny proportion of bites self hooked is still self hooking 'to some extent'.

The difference is too wide to accept yes as an answer; bolt rigs are trying to get 80%+ hook-ups without a strike whereas the rest (normal float fishing etc.) almost always require a strike, and the hook-up rate is generally less than 10% without a strike.

Totally agree. Alot of rigs are self hooking, particularly ledger rigs with an exposed hook point.

I was fishing for skimmers yesterday with a small open ended feeder on a paternoster rig with double red maggot on a size 18, alot of skimmers where hooking themselves against water and quiver tip resistance.