Why line concealment is so important

Line concealment

Because I predominately fish lots of waters where water clarity means the fish can see everything, line concealment has become a bit of a quest for me. I’ve tried everything over the years and I make sure that I have the right line angle for a spot.

Using a boat to drop your rig on a spot is a massive aid for me and although it’s not something everyone does or has access to, when you do utilize a boat in your fishing, it really does give you a new perspective of just how rig placement can make or break your session. Mere inches can matter.

Here on Stoneacres I know line concealment is a massive factor in if you catch; I was in a swim the other week and found a lovely spot and I lowered the rig down beautifully but I thought I’d concealed the line as good as I could. It was a Multi Rig with tungsten tubing, which has been my preference for many years, but when I did lower the rig onto the spot I noticed that the tubing just wasn’t lying right, it just didn’t lie flush with the weed, popping up slightly in places. Carp will swim around a spot, against the wall created by the weed, checking for lines. I’ve seen them doing this while watching them from up trees on Yateley’s Car Park Lake and if you’ve got any sign of line coming into the spot they won’t even feed there.

Line concealment is a massive factor if you catch.

Fishing ‘naked’ (i.e. bare line without tubing or leaders) is something I haven’t done for years but I knew that it could help alleviate the issue of that last few feet of line nearest the rig being visible. You can’t do this with light line; you need heavy-duty stuff that sinks well but isn’t stiff. It needs to follow contours very well. The key though is to pinch shot on the line at intervals of something like eight inches. Don’t scrimp on the shot: No.1’s or BB’s are required to really pin the line down and put six or seven on the line at least; you need the last four foot to be pinned down and out of the way of the fish as they move around the spot. Don’t worry about the shot snagging up or ruining the line; heavy-duty line won’t damage easily and if you pinch the shot on gently they’ll ping off if you get stuck in weed. The beauty about this set-up is you can place individual shot onto the weed to create the presentation you want, something that stiffer tubing never allowed.

I can imagine a lot of people will question me for using bare line when so many people use tubing as a safety measure to protect fish. I’ve never been a fan of leadcore, always preferring tubing, but it’s always been for its anti-tangle properties first and foremost. Don’t get me wrong, fish safety is something we should all think about, but let’s face it, people who free-line or fish using dog biscuits on the top never use tubing and these tactics aren’t criticised? I grew up with tubing being called ‘anti-tangle tubing’ and I think that has been forgotten slightly; it’s designed to be semi-rigid and prevent hooklengths tangling around bare main line. The safety properties have just been encouraged but are a side effect of sorts. I want people to be aware that bare lines are okay, they’re not some unspeakable horror that we must frown upon.