What's the best way to tie on a pop-up?

Gaz Fareham: Hookbait Swivels

“Sat on the Stream swim on Redesmere back in 1998, Scott Day, now the product development guru at Fox, showed me how he used a tiny match swivel on his Hinge Rig ‘D’ to attach his hookbait. The extra flexibility and movement was immediately obvious over tying onto a ring which was the standard method, but ever since then I have used a similar method.

“When Thinking Anglers upped the game by bringing out the now widely copied ‘Hook Ring Swivel’ back in 2008, I switched over immediately and have never looked back. To my mind it offers a few things; firstly you have the ring on the ‘D’ or the hook shank which gives maximum movement to the hookbait and the same benefits the old system used, but with the addition of the tiny micro swivel the hookbait itself can rotate freely and independently of the hook and the ring, which I think it a significant improvement. Tied directly to a ring, I’ve always felt a hookbait has the potential to flip and rotate a hook out of a tenuously pricked carp whereas the micro swivel allows the bait to spin.

“I use a loop of floss and tie a few simple Overhand Knots over a small boilie stop to create a 100% secure attachment, blobbing it with a lighter. The swivel plugs the hole nicely so I even use it with my corkball pop-ups these days as well and find it doesn’t really affect the buoyancy any more than the old tying on method.”

Dave Ellyatt: A bit of everything

“Traditionally, if I’m using a hardened corkball pop-up I’ve always preferred to tie them on using ESP Superfloss. I tie the loop around the mini rig ring first, then tighten down around the pop-up, then trim the tags and blob the knot, flattening it against the bait with the side of the lighter. Then I run the lighter flame around the floss which makes it go clear and seems to tighten it further.

“With airball style pop-ups I thread a length of floss through the hook ring swivel, pull the hookbait down onto the barrel of the swivel then trim and blob the two ends of floss against the bait, flattening it to form a ‘nail head’. This does away with the need for a Hair stop making things a lot less fiddly, especially in the middle of the night with my failing eyesight! I’ve never had a bait come off doing this and I use this blobbing method when using tigers as well.

“And talking of failing eyesight (I really must get some varifocals!), for the last year or so I’ve been using the ESP Metal Bait Screws for attaching both corkball and airball pop-ups. I’ve never had any issues with the skin on a corkball coming away or loss of buoyancy. It’s even dead easy to screw on a hookbait after dark without the aid of a torch which can be an edge in certain situations…”