Rig Camouflage

Posted by Keith on August 14, 2009 under Carp and Coarse Fishing, Help and Tips | Be the First to Comment

Rig camouflage…….possibly not a thought at the fore front of many anglers minds when approaching a water for the first time. I always here conversations about what baits are working well or where’s the best place to fish.

Yes, these are very important topics for discussion, but way ahead of all of these is that of rig camouflage.

The reason for my saying this is that it makes little difference if you have the most incredible bait and the best swim on the lake. Put an obnoxious rig into the swim and it’s very unlikely you’ll tempt anything! If you saw a bright red needle sticking up through your lounge carpet it’s pretty likely you’d see it before you stood on it. Camouflage the same item to the carpet colour and ‘ouch’……a trip to A&E!

So, let’s take this to our lakeside situation. The bottom make up of every lake or pond is different to the next one. For example a water with plenty of overhanging foliage will have dropped much of it into the water over many years of Autumnal seasons. This degrades on the bottom of the lake and forms a thick black smelly sludge, which we know as silt.

Imagine presenting a bright yellow or green hook length material over this black sludge. It’s not going to look that crash hot! We need to make sure all our terminal tackle blends in with the bottom material.

On the other end of the scale, a very dark hook length and rig items is going to look well out of place on a bright gravel bottom in a crystal clear gravel pit. This all sounds clear and quite obvious when we talk about it here, but I couldn’t honestly count the amount of times I have had to explain this on the bank side.

When you arrive at your chosen fishery, have a good mooch around the margins and see if you can gauge what sort of bottom you may be about to place your baits on to. I even go so far as to put my arm in and reach down to grab the bottom. I try to pull up some of the bottom and have a good look at it’s texture, colour and food content.

(This could be snails, lice, daphnia or bloodworms). All this is useful information, we get an idea of the type of approach and possibly even our baiting tactics before we’ve done anything!

Our next job would be to use our ever trusted marker rod and feature finding lead to cover some of the bottom. This should give us a clear idea of what we’re up against.  (I’ll cover this in depth in next months article.)

Don’t forget that the more items you add to your rig, the more there is for the fish to see. Keep it uncomplicated and you’ll inevitably get more results.

As some of you will already know, I am an advocate of slack line fishing. This basically means that once I have cast out, I will pull a few yards of line from the reel and let the line sink to the bottom. This will allow all of the slack to fall into the shape of the bottom, thus hiding much of the main line. Bear in mind that you’d need to fish a running lead rig so as to be able to register bite indication. Imagine if the line you used was a similar colour to the bottom of the pool? Almost invisible to the fish and surely a massive heave ho for you confidence too.

Company’s such as Gardner and Korda spend huge amounts of time and effort investing in terminal tackle that will blend in with the materials of the bottom.  From Tulip Beads, Tubing, Lead Core Leaders, Leads and even Teflon Coated hooks and swivels which stop shine and glare from an external light source.

All these items will increase our chances of bagging a fish. (please take care with your rigs when mixing and matching tackle items from different tackle company’s, I would suggest if your in doubt ask your tackle dealer for some help with selecting the right items.)

As an example, here’s a few items I would use for my perfect tackle approach for a silty water:

Mainline: Daiwa Sensor Mono 12-15lb breaking strain. This is a good strong and dark monofilament which sinks well and will blend with the silt.

Hook length Material: We have a vast array of choices here….my favourite is Mantis Dark from Kryston. This has a plastic sheathing over a soft dark braid. Available in both 15 and 25lb breaking strains.

Leads: I absolutely adore the Dung Leads from Atomic. These awesome leads will blend in totally with the bottom makeup.

Swivels and hooks: Teflon coated is a must. These will not glare up off the bottom and spook the fish.

Tubing or Lead core leaders: These all need to be dark in colour. Greys or very dark browns/blacks are great.

So, as you can see my rig items should all match up to the dark silt coloured bottom and be pretty invisible to the fish. I would obviously change this approach to lighter colours for gravel or greens for weed etc.

Good luck & tight lines

Keith Supple

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