Hair rigged pellets on the pole

Towards the end of last Autumn & the beginning of this Spring/Summer I have been experimenting with hair rigging a hard pellet dead depth on the pole.Hair rigging a hard pellet is nothing new when shallow fishing, either on the pole or the pellet waggler. But it is less common to hair rig a hard pellet on the deck with the pole. It is more common to see anglers either using soft pellets with a conventional spade end hook or a banded hard pellet straight onto the hook. Both of these however have their disadvantages.Soft pellets aren’t very durable & often get ravaged by silverfish or come off the hook on the strike. Either way the result is a lot of unnecessary shipping & in & out & that means lots of wasted time. On the other hand, a banded hard pellet is more durable than soft, however it is too obtrusive on the hook & that can lead to a poor hook hold.This is where the hair rig can come into play. With the hair rig, you have the advantage of having the same hook bait as the feed. As well as the durability to withstand silvers & because you are effectively fishing a bare hook, the benefit of a secure hook hold.However as ever in fishing terms, all is as straightforward as it appears & there are one or two tips that can hopefully go some way towards a decent rig.

The first point to consider is the size & shape of hook. Currently I am experimenting with my two favourite patterns & they are a size 16 eyed B911 when finesse is required & the stronger size 16 Fox series 2B for bagging, which is noticeably a bigger size. Both are good dependable hooks with fairly wide gapes. I have found hat both these hooks just about match a 6mm hard pellet. However, I do intend to experiment with smaller hooks in order to see if the are more productive.

The second point to consider is tying the hair rig itself. Firstly I have found that it’s best to use a bait band to mount the pellet into. The band is more versatile & gives you the option of changing the size of pellet of using completely different bait if required. To tie the bait band onto the hair I have found that a 4-5 turn grinner knot is best, wetted & pulled tight whilst the band is put under tension. This ensures that the band hangs straight & neat without any kinking. Another good tip when tying the knotless knot, is to make sure that after you initially thread the hook length through the eye & have chosen what length you want the hair to be, make sure you wrap the hair once around the shank. Then after you have proceeded to pull the knot tight, unwrap the hair from the shank. You will notice that the hair now hangs directly from the back of the shank, as that initial wrap will counteract the twisting that occurs when you tighten the knot. When tying the knot, the less turns you put on it, the more manoeuvrable the hair will be.

The third point is shotting patterns. So far I have had good results by using a double bulk of 2 no9’s four inches from the hook, followed by another bulk (depending on the shotting capacity) twelve inches further up on the hook length knot. This is a very positive set up that ensures positive registration. However I still have a variety of hook lengths made up to twelve inches in length, should I feel the need to have a spread out pattern, or no droppers at all.

Finally as with all methods, missed bites can be a problem. In tests so far I have only had a very small percentage of missed bites. I have put these down to the direction that the hook enters the mouth. When fished over depth, I have noticed an increase in bottom lip hooked fish as you would expect with a ledgered hair rig. When fished dead depth I have noticed most hook holds coming either to the side or the top lip as you lift the rig vertically on strike. Because I am continuously searching for the perfect rig for any given situation I have begun experimenting with a 360 degree rig. This to try & see if I can create more top lip hooked fish by increasing the manoeuvrability. This is achieved by adding a small swivel approximately 4 inches from the hook. By ensuring that the swivel sits in the loop it effectively creates a 360 rig. In theory this can only make the rig more sensitive resulting in the fish sucking the bait in with confidence & hopefully accentuating more top lip hooked fish. By incorporating the swivel into the floats shotting capacity, there is no need for a second bulk.

As they say, the proof of the pudding is in the eating:

I pitched up at my local fishery today in order to put the theory into practise. Peg 20 is on the spit & gives plenty of open water to play with. At 11-12 meters the bottom levels off giving a nice flat area to work from. The water was still a bit cold so caution would be the order of the day. I went about setting up four rigs. One with an eyed B911 & a standard 12 inch hook length with a double bulk. The second with an Eyed B911 the short 4 inch 360 rig. The third with an Fox series 2 & a 12 inch hooklength with a double bulk & a fourth with a fox series 2 & a short 4 inch 360 rig.

I plumbed up carefully with a plummet & then with an SSG to ensure I was dead depth. I then added an extra inch to allow for the tow. I intended to just flog one swim today, although i presumed I could catch steadily, I didn’t expect fireworks. The idea was to try the different rigs & see how the fish responded to them. The fish on this lake back off after a bit of disturbance & it defiantly pays to rotate lines, resting them in the process. Unless you are on an island peg, you must have more than one option to get the most out of the peg. If there had been a match on today I would have had at least two lines on the go. First put in was with the eyed B911 with a double bulk. After catapulting half a dozen pellets around the float a few pimple bubbles appeared. This is a giveaway sign of fish in the swim, usually carp & after a couple of minutes the float tip buried. A quick lift resulted in the No.10 Latex pouring from the pole as an angry carp took off. The carp in this lake fight harder than any other I have caught, there isn’t an explanation, expect to think that the owner feeds them steroids! By keeping the pole tip low the carp soon turned back towards me. Steadily shipping back I had the fish under control, that was until until It found a snag of reed roots too my left. It shed the hook leaving me with just a rather nasty clump of roots for my efforts.

The next hour produced 3 more carp, a couple of roach & two nice skimmers, but the action was far from frantic. It was time to tryout another rig; so on went the short four inch hook length. The reaction was slow & not what I was expecting, but I did manage two more carp, a couple more skimmers & two nice brown goldfish. What was noticeable was that all the fish were hooked cleanly in the side & the top of the mouths with a good hook hold. Although bites were drying up I can’t say it was down to the rig as the lake seemed to be fishing poorly.[Photo] This brown goldfish took a liking to the hair rigged pellet. The third rig had the fox series 2 with a double bulk & after two hours I only managed 3 carp & the odd skimmer. I felt that I was over feeding with the catapult on what was obviously going to be a hard day. So I put the catapult down & placed a small pot on the end of the pole. Trickling in just 4 pellets enticed a couple more fish, but I now started to suffer with liners as the feed was too tight. What was supposed to be a simple day was turning into a bit of a nightmare!It was time to try the fourth rig with the fox series 2 & the short 360 swivel. With no immediate response it was a case of sitting it out patiently for just two more carp that must have got lost & stumbled across my hook bait!

By now it was mid afternoon & getting very warm, the whole lake seemed to be fishing very slow & apart from a pleasure angler fishing floating bread crust, everybody was struggling. Getting a bit annoyed with proceedings I decided to have a re plumb. I was shocked to find that for some reason I was fishing two inches off bottom. How the hell had that happened? For the life of me I couldn’t explain it, the only thing I can think of is that I had made a schoolboy error & hadn’t plumbed up properly in the first place. I quickly deepened up on the first rig & spread the second bulk to effectively create two droppers. The response was llitterel immediate as a decent bream hit the net on the first put in. The next couple of hours were a bit better, with a couple more carp, tench & skimmers showing. However the wind had picked up & because I now effectively had a very short length of line from pole tip to float, presentation began to suffer. In addition, I believe I had already spoilt the swim by feeding too much previously whilst not even fishing on the deck!! The damage had been done & although I sat it out a bit more, in reality I had given up.

So there we have it, to summarise the whole day was a bit of a balls up. The results can only be inconclusive, as I failed to get some basics right in order to do the rigs justice. Perviously I have had much better results. I can’t be certain until I give all four rigs another thorough workout & with a match next week, all I can say is...watch this space.