Bolt rigs for roach etc

[The Flying Tench]

I tried your approach today, Andrew, at Ladygrove Lake, which for those who don't know it has lots of small roach plus a reasonable head of better roach and skimmers. I don't have a heavy bobbin, so used a swing tip to show the drop-backs, and made sure the line was tight. I had a 30gm feeder fixed to a Bob Roberts feeder boom with a 3" trace, ie a running set-up.

 

I started with single maggot on an 18 hook. Every now and then the rod would jolt and the swing tip would drop, just as it was meant to - but no fish. Happened 5 times so I reckoned something was wrong, and decided to try a bigger hook. I then tried a size 14 with sweetcorn. The same thing happened a couple of times. Then I tried a couple of maggots on the size 14 hook. It worked about 3 times out of 4! I decided that for self-hooking maybe the hook needed to be big relative to the bait, so switched to a size 12 with sweetcorn maggot cocktail. That worked fine and I caught a few nice skimmers.

 

Thanks, Andrew. I don't think it will often be my preferred way of fishing, but there will be occasions when I want to fish a float rod and have a ledger out too, and this will be a good rig to have up my sleeve.

Agreed - allow softness or slack into the setup and it won't be anywhere near as effective. I'd still recommend swapping the quivertip for a normal rod, point it straight at the rig and clip on a very heavy bobbin.