The Cobra Rig

“For a good few years now I have used what we call the ‘Cobra’ as my main pop-up rig. It is essentially Elliott Gray’s soft boom hinge, with a few minor tweaks and slightly different component choices. I started using the Cobra after seeing Marcus Howarth catching on it, rarely (if ever) suffering any hook pulls or losses, and wanting something that offered the mechanics and aggressive hooking potential of the Stiff Hinge that I’d come to know and love, but without the necessity for it to be fished over the perfectly clean bottom that I always felt a fully blown ‘Hinge’ needed.

Note how perfectly central the hook is sitting on the hookbait

“The soft boom just gives you that little bit more leeway for fishing it over silt or light weed, and is also a bit quicker and easier to tie than the loops and boom of a Hinge. A lot of my angling is quick overnighters and so a rig I can loop on, have ready to go within seconds is ideal and it has become a mainstay of my angling to this day.

“I love the minimal nature of the doubled up ‘boom’ section, and it works brilliantly to negate any tangles and helps kick the it away from the lead. I like the fact you can tie it up and balance it beautifully with a range of materials too: 25lb boom and a size 7 for a 12mm pop-up, or a 35lb boom and size 4 with a 16mm for heavier situations.”

Nigel Sharp's Advice

“My version of the Hinged Stiff Link hasn’t dramatically changed that much over the past few years - apart from the boom section. Through taking part in the Below The Surface: ‘Testing The Pros’ series, I learnt that supple booms, if cast on shallow gravel, don’t lay as you’d like to think they do, so I now use very stiff ones made from Gardner’s 30lb BS Mirage.”

Terry Hearn's Take

Question: Why do you prefer the original style of Hinged Stiff - i.e. tied with loops - over using an Albright Knot and connecting a coated braid to a Stiff Bristle Filament (Elliott Gray style)?

“Simply because the usual version with loops has already worked very, very well for me across dozens of different waters… Why try to fix something that isn’t broken? To be fair, they’re two different rigs really. The hook section on the Hinge Stiff Link has a 360 motion, unlike the Albright Knot version. Obviously I’ve played with tying my pop-up section directly to braid, when I was going through the ‘trying to get my pop-ups closer to the bottom’ phase, but I always end up going back to what I know best: a stiffer boom with loops and a swivel on the pop-up section.”

Elliott Gray's Take

“I prefer my version of the Hinge for almost every situation, the only downside is that it’s more tangle prone that the original, which being made from stiff products doesn’t seem to tangle very often at all. This is obviously a huge bonus, but I know that providing I watch the rig in flight, and when using the line clip, I make sure I hit the clip properly, my version won’t tangle.

“The great thing about my version is that it presents much more happily over a wider variety of lakebeds, as the supplier boom has enough give in it for the rig to settle over any minor “bumps” caused by weed or chod. Being a soft hooklink, nine-inches being my favoured length, it really flies into the mouth too, and the hook holds are off the chain!

“If I had any advice or tips for someone using it, it would be to balance it out as delicately as you can, and when doing so, always remember that your hookbait will take on water. I have the bait only just about sinking when it’s cast out, which is actually too buoyant, but within half hour or so it’s already taking on water and becoming heavier. If you have it sinking at the right speed upon casting, then once water absorption takes place, it’s going to be even heavier (too heavy).”