Barbel - to hair rig or not to hair rig?

[Anderoo]

Dear knowledgeable ones

 

Tomorrow evening I'm going for my first attempt at barbel fishing at a tiny river - which may or may not contain barbel, depending on who you talk to. There are definitely chub though. I'm going to try pellet and luncheon meat. With the pellets I was going to use a band but I'm unsure whether to hair rig the meat or not. What do you reckon?

 

In case there aren't barbel there I'd like to hook any chub that come along, which makes me err on the side of no hair, or maybe a very short hair. But assuming there are barbel there, would a hair be better?

 

Ta

[seph]

Generally, I hair rig everything except luncheon meat and natural baits like worms and slugs. With pellets I superglue two back to back. As for hair length, I usualy keep it as short as possible. The longer you have it the less chance you will have of hooking the Chub, as they are very wise and will detect something is wrong very quicky and eject the bait. Hope that helps a bit

Edited July 24, 2006 by seph

[Anderoo]

Cheers Seph, that does help. Is there a reason you don't hair rig meat?

[MALC2]

Cheers Seph, that does help. Is there a reason you don't hair rig meat?

 

A few reasons are you can hide a bigger hook in the meat and being as it is soft fish can pull it off a hair.

[seph]

Like Malc say's. A size 2 or 4 hook is easily hidden in the meat.

[Anderoo]

That's settled then, no hair (which I'd prefer for the chub anyway) and if I use pellet I can easily stick a band on.

 

Cheers guys I'll let you know how things go...

[seph]

Anderoo,

 

If you use a kwik link then you can change hook lengths easily, have one made up with the hair on and the pellet already superglued to it. I am not a great fan of bands as they seem to snap easily and are sometimes a pain getting over the pellet, much easier to superglue.