Good chub rigs

There are several different types of chub rigs that you can use. One is for the more cautious chub which involves a balanced end tackle. What this means is that the chub doesn’t feel any resistance when it picks up the bait. You can use just sufficient weight to hold bottom. This can be used in conjunction with a light quiver tip rod or touch ledgering. Quite often I when using this end tackle when I feel that the chub has picked up the bait then I tend to move the rod towards the bait and give a little more slack. This normally involves the chub moving off with the bait in their mouths and a definite hookup.

The rigs I’ve used this summer and autumn is a bolt rig. It’s effective and ineffective. I’ve used it on the H.Avon and seen chub pickup the bait in it’s lips and spit it out on numerious occassions, but they keep coming back for more and eventually because they are greedy things they get hooked. I’ve been pulling my hair out when I’ve seen 6lb+ chub under my feet feeding on the hemp and boilies and I just can’t hookup’s. But then bingo it happens. Perhaps if I changed my weight and fished lighter then things might be different.

This rig works for me on the B.Avon, H. Avon and D. Stour.

The hook length is short at about 5-7 inches of ESP sink braid. The knots are very simple figure of 8 on the hair and boilie stop, then a knot-less knot on the hook followed by another figure of 8 knot (loop knot) where it’s attached to the quick change link swivel. I use a short length of silicon tubing to cover the link swivel. What I’ve found important is that to just secure the eye of the link swivel into the 2-3oz inline lead. This gives a sufficient amount of the swivel for the silicon to be a tight fit.

I’ve used the Drennan sink braid, but I find that the outer layer breaks to easily for my liking. The plus point is that it has a low diameter, however if the eye of the hook is not completely closed then you run the risk of the braid pulling through. Now the new seamless eyed hooks would be ok, but I’ve found that they blunt very easily. So that’s why I’ve stuck with the ESP.

The curved shank raptors are one of the best hooks I’ve used. They stay sharp even though they tend to rattled around on the gravel by small fish going at the bait.

So this end tackle works really well. One word of warning though is that the bites are 3 ft twitchers and if you are not careful the rod will go in. I normally put the spool in bait runner mode. Oh and I fish a slack line where-ever possible and have a back lead about 2-3 ft away from the weight.