Elliott Gray discusses Bottom Bait Rigs

I use one rig with baits that are fished on the deck and this rig is a line-aligned blow-back style presentation. I use a long Hair, a large hook and a bait that has had the weight tampered with. Whether I’m using particles or boilies, I don’t want the bait to be too light. Due to the length of the Hair I cannot rely on the weight of the hook to hold the bait down. The Hair and bait must be able to fall flat. Generally I will drill into the bait and then plug it with cork, this allows me get the weight just right. This works well when fishing over both particles and boilies but each for a different reason.

When particle fishing there’s always a possibility that the fish will become preoccupied on the smaller, lighter items such as hemp. Personally I want to introduce a large hookbait, such as a tiger nut or a boilie. By taking some of the weight away from the bait I am increasing the chance of it being hoovered up. I must, however, be careful not to make it too light. Carp feed slowly and tight to the bottom when eating particles and you don’t want the bait wafting around too much.

When applying this rig to a boilie-only situation, the lack of weight in the hookbait really can fool them. A nice spread of boilies is a tempting meal for most carp and in an ideal situation, as the fish pass by, they will stop to feed. Unless you are introducing a variety of different baits, each and every one of the freebies will have the same size and weight. The carp tailor the way they feed in order to pick up these items of food, working out how hard they need to suck at the baits so to lift them. As the fish take your hookbait, unaware that the bait is much lighter than all the others, it will shoot back into the mouth. This has taken the carp by surprise and the bait now has further to travel in order to be ejected from the mouth. At this point the mechanics of the rig come into play, with the tubing turning the hook point down into position. It is a very effective way of catching carp whilst boilie fishing with bottom baits.

The buoyancy and the separation between the hook and the bait, due to the Hair length, make for a deadly combination. This rig has served me almost faultlessly for a number of years now. I have used it in a variety of forms and I can honestly say that the bait matters; the hook holds are far more consistent when the bait has been corked.

With this said, most of the time I will use pop-ups for my boilie fishing, the bottom baits generally only come out when I’m either fishing in close or using particles, either on their own or alongside boilies. I prefer the hooking potential of a pop-up rig, the way it sits cocked and ready-to-go. Even if the rig is disturbed somehow, it will always re-present itself. This is really important. Carp can move our rigs in a manner of ways, often accidental, I think it’s a large bonus to have an arrangement out there that can reset itself. Pop-ups tend to help do this just fine, the hook is also kept out of harm’s way and won’t become masked as it moves. It’s about having a rig that’s ‘fishing’ all the time

Even what seem like clean gravel spots can host a variety of bits and bobs that could cover the hook, unless you can actually see the bottom with your eyes, sometimes it’s easier on your mind to play it safe and use a pop-up. There are of course some venues where pop-ups do seem to work less effectively than bottom baits, some carp are warier than others; it’s trial and error I suppose. On occasions a pop-up will be too obvious, and then, if you’re not catching when you think you should be, you have to ring the changes.

I use three different pop-up rigs: a variation of the Hinged Stiff Link, the Withy Pool Rig and a Chod Rig in two different forms. Each of these is used for the specific situations and the hookbaits are of paramount importance. Using a pop-up also allows me to get away with a larger hook as it’s masked by the bait – something I really like.

Elliott's balanced bottom bait

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