Fix up, look sharp
The humble snowman rig is a proven big fish boilie rig, but what if we told you yours was looking a bit untidy? Jon ‘Shoes’ Jones shares his small tips to get them looking really, really sharp
“Yow car’ beat a Snowman,” as they say in the Black Country. And quite right they are too! This simple, but highly effective presentation is many anglers’ first choice when trying to tweak the mechanics of their boilie presentation, and does away with the need for tweaking pop-ups, making wafters and messing about with drills and bits of cork. Stick a buoyant thing on top of the boilie and lob it out – simple.
But what if you could make it all look a little less, well, agricultural. Snowman rigs can appear slightly clumsy at times, as two round balls don’t really fit together very well. Imagine if you were creating a real snowman – out of snow – and you just put one round ball of snow on top of the other. He’d be headless within seconds!
Because of this, I’ve always used scissors or a small craft knife to trim the boilie and the pop-up, so there’s a flat surface for them to connect. It doesn’t half make it look a lot neater I’m sure you’ll agree.
I began tipping off 16mm baits with a 10mm HIGHLITE, which are more buoyant than a helium filled lilo. Honestly, I’m amazed they don’t just float off into outer space when you open the packet! The problem – if you can call it that – is they can actually lift a 16mm bottom bait off the lakebed, bringing the hook with it. Not good on harder bottoms, because the hook can get easily blunted. By shaving off the small amount of boilie, however, and adding a SIGHT STOP to the top of everything, I managed to achieve what I believe to be the perfect buoyancy for a snowman rig. The whole lot is sitting upright, like a real snow-made snowman, but the bottom bait is just wobbling on the lakebed, exactly like a freebie.
I tend to mix and match the colours of my HIGH LITE/SIGHT STOP combination to suit different lakebeds and light levels, but it makes sense to use a combination of colours, if only to hedge your bets.
Small tweaks then can make a big difference. Good luck.
01) Trim the pop-up on one side to give it a flat edge. This is an Avid HIGHLITE.
02) Do the same to your boilie bottom bait. Scissors or a craft knife are fine for this.
03) The two flat edges will sit neatly on top of each other when threaded on the Hair.
04) Repeat the process with the top of the HIGHLITE and add a SIGHT STOP. Perfection!