Interesting Theories?

I was reading an interesting article in Tim Paisley’s ‘to catch a carp’ about how he now uses running rigs instead of safety/fixed leads. It made great sense in that he was saying how the venues he fishes are pressured and that the carp are educated enough now to be able to pick up the hook bait, straighten the hooklength to the lead to feel for resistance. Once resistance has been felt the carp will then drop the bait (if it can). It was this article that made me start the thread ‘Slack Lines’ because it was also documented that because of the lack of indication through tight lines this meant that the carp could pick the bait to feel resistance, if it managed to nick itself in the process, could use the same weight of the lead to unhook itself and without the angler being any the wiser because the tight line would show no indication. He also went on to say that a fish could move a lead well beyond a yard before the angler had any clue that fish were present.
This bothered me and so I started trying one rod with Running rigs (4oz leads) and slack lines. Although I’ve now caught good fish on both systems, It’s still early days in my own testing with this method, but what do you think?

Oi 'Chubbo-Rik', this is where you detail your thoughts about the above complicating issues etc...

Yes stuart, carp mouth our baits many times without us realising it, Tims writings is based on an old theory, I've actually watched carp back away with a bait in their mouth and as soon as they have felt any kind of resistance they have immediately rejected the bait and bolted. Carp rigs are generally inefficient and running leads dont always run of course. In the older days we used to fish paternoster style, but with many of the experiements we used to do, ie casting to the far margins, the paternoster would generally be tangled and act as a bolt rig. Another trick was developed by some one, a concertina rig I think they called it, or a confidence rig, basically the rig was assembled using fine rubber tubing which just fit over the hooklength of braid, the tubing was pulled down to the hook and released so it would spring back, as it did so it pulled the hook length material into the rubber sleeve, thus shortening the hook length which in turn was attached to a semi fixed lead. The theory being that as the carp reversed with the bait in its mouth, the hook length material would slowly be emmitted from the tube, the more which was emmitted, the more confident that the bait wasn't attched to anything, the carp would become, eventually resulting in a full blown run, thus dragging the rest of the hook material out of the tube and hitting the bolt. We did catch on waters which we were having difficulty with reference to "mouthing carp reversing", wether the rig worked as it was supposed to do is anyones guess, but it appeared to improve our results for a while? I think it was developed by someone in the early eighties and braid was reinvented?

A company in Oldham called Fish Eye View produced some interesting vidoes while researching bite indication and mouthing fish. basically they put fibre optic cameras alongside baits in lakes nad filmed these over a time period, it was amazing to see just how many fish mouthed the baits without giving any indication to the angler on the bank, which to me indicated just how inefficient many carp rigs actually are. Best stick to the easy southern waters Stuart?

Goes back to the age old question about how clever Mr. Carp is?

Where can I buy one of these videos old wise one?

Andrew Jackson may know about them, they came from his neck of the wood, the last time I spoke to these guys was about 10 year ago, I had young Julian over for a do in Middleton, I think Derek Dronsfield was involved with them at one time, I'm really surprised they never took off in the carp world. Mr Carp is as clever as we allow him to be, we educate him as you know and give him a memory (Conditioning) conditioning is a very powerful thing, the phychologist realise this, look how the US military use it, and even in humans its very difficult to desensitise once you've brainwashed someone, in a evolutionary time scale it would be interesting just how much conditioning will actually transfer into a carps gene stream, we may end up with carp that you would,nt want to play chess with?

The brain size of the Pond or King variety is larger than that of the Wildie, and scientifically carp (which are aquatic remember) have the same sized brain as a common poutry hen and it is assumed from this that they are capable of the same intelligence (be careful with that last word) if this is true (and it cant of course be measured proper)then for an aquatic specie in relation to a terrestrial avarian, you are talking about a massive learning (suggested) capacity, You need to understand something first though, I'll just go down stairs and get some of my old diaries!

Genetic modification and physical appearance

Condition Factors, Wildies and King strains

the best thing i can do is refer you to a chapter in quest for the queen written by tim paisley: rigs and presentation.
the book itself dates from 1990 but it leads you in how rig problems need to be addressed.

I think I'm going off the original thread here, but its something I used to find quite interesting in the seventies and we used to judge our carp by this. I'm an ecologist and not a biologist so some of my factors could be wrong. But we used to record condition factors of the carp we caught, this is a physical determinant, based on one (at the time) of health and fitness in fish, I dont know weither the scientists still use this method, but basically a carp of between 150 and 200 was considered to be a physically healthy fish, the measurement for this was something like girth X width X length multiplied by itself and divided by 10,000, this gave you the condition factor. The old Wildies were long lean high backed specimens with condition factors of say 125 to 150, the king strains are more semetrical from 200 and above, these figures would suggest a larger brain capacity in the king strains than those of the wildie, according to physical appearance. I have notice significant changes in condition factors as the years have progressed, of course carp like the St Laurence strains have relatively low CF's, possibly through adaption over time to cope with the river currents, I dont know? Actuaaly Stuart, I'm going completly off the original thread here and probably talking a load of rubbish anyway, so I'll shut up before someone hits me!

Don't you dare Monk, please continue... and Roro, please follow up on that last post of yours please.

Actually Stuart I recon it will only be a matter of time before someone devwelops a camera while will run through the line, you could have a monitor in the bivvy and watch your bait, check to see if the rigs landed alright and watch approaching carp, anything small that approaches you could always throw rocks in the water to scare it off. At Uni we used to tag animals, some ecologists put cameras on them, how long before we can drop a camera on a carps head, Kevin Nash carp cameras complete with velcro strapping and titinium lense caps. hopefully I'll be six feet under when it gets to that?

I'd better go now Stuart, Girl friends just swore at me!

I've changed the way I think about rigs totally over the last year or so. I don't think that the rig really matters, so long as you've got confidence in it. For every person that advocates running leads, someone advocates fixed.Long hooklengths, short hooklengths, light lead heavy lead, someone will always think differently. You have to(?) live with the fact that some fish will always get away with it if you're ledgering. If you cant, freeline/floatfish and hit the twitches!
The only constructive thing I can say is be different to everone else, but be prepared to follow the crowd if they out fish you!

If you want to see movement, try light(under 1oz)leads, leave a drop on indicators and heavy drop-backs.Might work

The book Roto mentions with Tim Paisley's chapter gives a good description about the development which took place, we were fishing the Roman Lakes around the same time as Tim 74/75, so I can relate to his findings. Rigs have been designed to cope with special theories at the time, on certain waters, for certain fish, not all the fish in A water will mouth bait, some will run whatever. From my own prospective, when I first started catching carp, they all ran, from the mid seventies, they started twitching, then the bolt came along and they started running again for a spell, hairs made a significant impact when originally introduced, since then they have moved about all over the hook, gone longer shorter, baits back on the hook. I think in general terms I go along with Dave, if a carp wants your bait its going to pick it up and run with it, rigs mean little in this respect, if however you want to increse the variables and put twitching and mouthing carp on the bank, you are going to have to experiment with rigs, some do appear to work under certain criteria and as dave says if everyone else is catching on a certain method, then change to it, you have to be open minded about these things really and of course have the confidence to try things long term, sometimes they work other times you waste a lot of time. I can remember reading about Rod Hutchinson's experiements with garden peas as a bait, he spent a hell of a long time finding out they simply didnt work?

The problem is catching a fish only tells you that THAT carp was fooled by the bait/rig on THAT day. The only way you can really tell is by changing the rig and see if you still catch. but by then they could have stopped feeding...........
You really need to get them in the edge and watch them-but that might depress you when trying your new "wonder rig"
Didn't Rod also sat that sweetcorn was a small fish bait?!

Get them feeding and "wanting" the bait.Competetive feeding solves a lot of rig problems. Its that easy!!

Yes of course Dave, but are we not talking about opportunist feeding carp here and not carp which a pre occupied? From my experience of pre occupied carp they will literally rip the bottom up, regardless of rigs, when they are having it they have it!

Yes Rod did say that about sweet corn Dave, having said that many large carp have been caught on corn though, a lot of it is speculative!