Carp Fishing Forums, UK and European Carp Fishing Forums

This month we have been looking at how effective rig camouflaging really is, to make this a reasonably fair comparison we decided to use a simple semi-fixed rig cast to the same positions using one rig matched to the lakebed as best as possible using off-the shelf products from Korda, Fox and ACE.

Firstly we tried the rigs at a local club water which is literally teaming with carp (albeit small) and using identical hookbaits and presentations, the lakebed is quite silty so one rig was constructed fully using black (silt) coloured components and the other was made using clay (yellow/light brown) components, the takes were pretty much identical on either rig and this leads us to the conclusion that in a heavily stocked water that camouflaging will not really make a noticable difference to catch rates since fish are competing over food.

We then tried both rigs again over silt in a more heavily pressured and lower stocked venue where the fish are quite renowned to be rig-shy, we only had one run on the rod with the non-camouflaged rig whereas the other rod recieved three runs with 2 being landed and one fish lost at the net. This does give the impression that the camouflaging is quite effective on this type of water.

So from this we have concluded that YES camouflage does make a difference, however a lot of bearing on this is wether the fish are heavily competing for food or not.

1. Dont throw terminal tackle away, this sounds quite obvious really, but how many times have you discarded an old hooklength and left a swivel or hook attached that are still perfectly usable with only the hooklength material being damaged.

2. Invest in a petrol stove as they currently are far cheaper to run in the long term than a gas stove

3. Have a good dig around in the bargain bin at your local tackle shop, you might be suprised what can be found in there, just because something has been deemed obsolete doesnt make it useless.

4. Re-sharpen hooks, decent quality hooks can normally be sharpened several times rather than just binning them.

5. Cheaper baits, dont overlook classic baits such as sweetcorn and luncheon meat, they still work just as well as they always have.

And a few final pointers

Use less groundbait, you dont always have to fish over a large pva bag full, try downsizing bags also, smaller bags are often cheaper.

When you change your line, only change the first 200 yds, its highly unlikely that you'll be using anything beyond that and the rest will just be wasted

And finally...Resist the temptation in the tackle shop for those "must have" new items and gadgets unless it really is an absolute neccessity, you've managed so far without it so you can probably carry on for a while longer.

Tight Lines!