Small River Fishing: Ian Welch Opens his Tackle Box

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interesting what you said about black caps and you used to sand them up...using them alot for chub, perch and barbel fishing in mainly clearwater when the fish are having it in winter...they need to see it!..the amount of knocks taps twitches and eventually a wack round are often the fish on the feeder... as we know...But the only fish i ever caught on a feeder was a chub about 4lb...on a small stream all halibutted up, dropped it in and whack...played a fish into the net, went to unhook it only to find it had managed to get a medium gripmesh into its gob...hook well clear. never forget it!

where does the pole laggy go on the grayling rig then?

Jason

jasonbean1 said:

where does the pole laggy go on the grayling rig then?

Jason

Click to expand...

Jason, when I tried this (shown it by a regular Wey, Itchen and Test grayling angler) about 10 years ago, we both reckoned on the elastic being 12-18" up your mainline from your float. It never seemed to make much odds to me.
In fact I reckon it just over complicated things but in hindsight I attached it with (size 18) swivels at each end of the elastic, totally OTT.
Whereas Ian uses rig rings; less cluttered.

Oh yeah, only use short lengths of elastic; 1-2"

Though as touched on by Ian, barbed hooks are the way forward, forget all the nonsense written about barbless giving better hook penetration.
(thought you'd like that idea)

This one is a real balancing act because just as the addition of the elastic takes the pressure off the hookhold during the fight, so it also takes some of the pressure away from the strike when you get the bite in the first instance.

To avoid hook pulls I tend to use a waggler-style rod when trotting for grayling because of the more forgiving action compared to the tippy action of a stick float rod and this lessens the impact of the strike too, particularly at range. I tend to counter this by using braid or low-stretch main line.

I've experimented with the elastic in every possible position and in varying lengths and as cg said the best place appears to be around 18in above the float; although again this is a balance because during the course of a roving grayling session you will be varying the depth you fish from swim to swim, indeed from cast to cast. Stick with 18in on relatively uniform beats but think again on sections where you will be fishing swims with very variable depths as it's a pain having to re-tackle!

Length, as CG said, is important too and this depends on the number and type of elastic you are using I've settled on about 1.5in of a 'standard' number 7 and use the smallest micro rings you can tie to!

Ian

nice to see you posting o nthe forum - an informative, helpful post too - hope this encourages you to post a little more often