Game-Changers: The Mag-Aligner

The winter of 2005 was made much easier for those in the known thanks to Rob Maylin and his refined maggot presentation: the Mag-Aligner. Like Nick Helleur’s Dynamite Stick, it took lakes apart. Maylin on Sandhurst: completed it! Lewis Read on Frimley: smashed it! Read and Willsmer vs. Bell and Wright in a Celebrity Cricket Fishing match: they broke the record for the quickest wipeout of rods! It was—and still is—a game-changing presentation, especially when tied up to perfection. Here, Thinking Anglers’ Lewis Read runs through how he discovered the rig, the impact it had on his fishing, and why he’s now increased the hook size he uses with it…

CARPOLOGY: How and when did you discover the Mag-Aligner?
LEWIS READ: “That was way back in 2007. I was due to do a Cricket Fishing feature for CARPology with James Willsmer. We were up against Joe (the editor) and fat George Clooney look-a-like Robbie Bell, on Elphicks’ North Lake. The legendary Rob Maylin had been tearing a new one out of every lake in the area on the Mag-Aligner, and his results were truly outstanding.

“With that in mind, I went to Pit 3 at Frimley. I dropped into the Gravelly Swim next door to Rob, who was in the famous Double Boards (and clumping them as usual). I had a good natter with him and showed him the version of the rig I had tied up. Luckily, it wasn’t far out—I think he suggested only a small change to the orientation of the Enterprise Mag-Aligner Grub, the fat end running up the hooklink rather than the (more logical) narrow end—which was how I’d tied it.”

CARPOLOGY: Can you summarise just how effective the Mag-Aligner was when you first started using it?
LEWIS READ: “The perfect way to explain that would be to simply say we trounced the lads from ’Ology with it the next day. It was that good, that in the end, I even got James to tie one up. At that time, remember, James owned DT Baits. He didn’t really want to fish with the ‘germs’; he wanted to catch on boilies. Eventually, he relented, when we had almost won. His rod must have been in place for only a couple of minutes before it rattled off. From memory, that one fell off, but the rig he dropped in soon after also went off quickly, and that was it. We’d won.

“Wherever my little office arms could cast one, it did the job. As long as the lake was suitable in terms of having little or no weed and mainly carp in it, it absolutely clumped ’em.”

CARPOLOGY: Who among your friends also knew about it back then?
LEWIS READ: “Nige, Jamie, Tel… It didn’t seem like it was a mega-secret as such, but Rob wasn’t going around showing the world. It was his edge, and a great one at that.”

CARPOLOGY: Has any rig you’ve used before or since, had the impact on results that the Mag-Aligner had? 
LEWIS READ: “Remember, maggots weren’t widely used by carpers, so that in itself was a major edge, and waters tended to be a lot less tricky than, say, a low-stock, weedy big-fish pond. But no, I’ve never experienced anything like it.”

CARPOLOGY: Why was the Mag-Aligner so much more effective than other maggot presentations of the time?
LEWIS READ: “In hindsight, it was a combination of things. I think it was the maggot approach overall that made it so effective. Then there was the small, subtle hookbait—almost invisible amongst the freebies—and the big cluster of maggots released from the PVA bag. Asking for a comparison between the Mag-Aligner and other contemporary rigs that were being used with conventional baits is a bit random. I’m now totally convinced that it’s the maggot bag that really makes the difference. As mentioned, they weren’t being used much. The set-up’s effectiveness was down to that, and a highly visible patch of wriggly bait which they loved. We all know how effective naturals are now, don’t we? They had largely been forgotten, though. The hooking mechanism was simply brilliant, too.”

CARPOLOGY: Has the version you were using at the start changed much to the one you’d tie today?
LEWIS READ: “The only change is the size of the hook. In hindsight (what a wonderful thing!), the need to use a tiny size 12 hook was a little OTT. A few more maggots impaled on a slightly bigger one would’ve offered a more robust rig whilst not having an impact on the pick-up rate. In fact, it may have hooked more.”

CARPOLOGY: Do you use the Mag-Aligner much these days? If not, why not?
LEWIS READ: “I use maggots a lot in the winter, but I usually fish them on a more conventional presentation. I use the standard piece of foam on the Hair and attach a little cluster of maggots to a small rig ring. My hook is a size 5 Curve Point and I use a medium Noodle Kicker. The mesh bag of germs is still absolutely key to the approach all these years later. There’s no spodding. Just lob it out in the zone and you’re fishing.”

“Why don’t I use it? Mainly because the lake I’ve been fishing in winter has crays and a load of big features. I wanted to fish with a more conventional hooking arrangement. Perhaps I should bring out the old Mag-Aligner again next winter…”