by Stu Whitehouse, August 27, 2006

The big secret to catching carp ...... Don't put the bait on the hook!!!

Ok now that everyone is laughing let me refine and explain that idea. Carp feed by sucking in things that look tasty and edible but they also eject (by blowing) anything "wrong" out at high speed.

Over the years European carp anglers have discovered that the carp has an uncanny ability to eject a bait with a hook in it. To overcome this people came up with various ideas to seperate the bait from the hook, thus was born the "hair" rig. Human hair was glued to the bend of a hook and the bait threaded onto the hair. Todays hair rig comes in many different forms but for most North American fish a basic rig should suffice, they haven't been pressured to the extent of Euro carp.

The basic idea with this setup is that the carp sucks your bait in, dragging the hook into its mouth, as the fish feels the hook it will blow the bait back out. The hair being flexible will allow the bait to bend on the hair whilst the hook will stay in the lip area of the fish.

To tie one up take some fine line (1/2lb is ideal) and tie an overhand knot to form a small loop between 1 and 2 inches (this is trial and error and depends how hard the fish are feeding, shorter for shy fish, longer for confident fish).

Feed one ond of the loop back through itself and around the bend of your hook. Now you should have a hook with a loop hanging from the bend, tie your hook to your mainline as normal. Next you need to make a baiting needle, for this a straight piece of wire approx 4 inches long with a small nick in the end ( similar to the barb on a hook). Thread your chosen bait onto the bait needle, hook the nick in the needle onto your loop of line and feed your bait onto the loop. Next you need something to stop the bait falling off the loop, there are purpose made stops but a small piece of dry spaghetti works well.

There you go , one hair-rigged piece of bait ready for the carp.

Onto tackle, hook size is again personal, but for carp upto 40 pounds I tend to go with a size 6 or 8 (single not treble). One favourite line for carp is Maxima chameleon, snaggy waters about 16lb breaking strain, in clear water 12lb is good. Rods (poles)... I use 12ft rods for most of my carping, ranging in test curve from 2lb to 3 1/2lb .... how that equates to rod ratings here I don't know. A test curve is the weight at the tip ring required to pull the rod blank through 90 degrees. The length is mainly for casting distances as all English carp fishing is bank rather than boat based.

Bait can be a simple as bread or as complicated as custom made boillies. Here are a few tried and tested ones, sweetcorn (green giant is good, 3 or 4 grains on a hair). Spam (1/2 to 3/4 inch square on the hair) you can also spice this up with a coating of curry powder or by frying it first. Bread either as a dough ball or used as flake (tear a piece of the white stuff and just pinch a corner onto the hair). Worms (night crawlers to you guys, change this up by injecting the worm with air from a syringe, it'll stand up off the bottom).

One of my favourite ways of catching carp is by fishing on the surface with a freelined bait. Bread is good for waters with no birdlife to pester you. Throw some free offerings out and once you hear the suck and slurp of the carp feeding just use a hooked piece of bread. Flick it out where either the wind/current will take it over the carp or drop it in front of one of the feeding fish. If you want to surface fish on a water where birdlife stops you using bread then dog biscuits are awesome ..... hey quit laughing. Take 2 or 3 pedigree chum mixers and drill a small hole in the centre of them, thread them on the hair and use a small piece of spaghetti to stop them coming off. Drop them in the water at your feet for 30 seconds to get them wet and give you casting weight.



A common carp of around 15lbs. You can tell its a common because it is fully scaled and the scales are the same size.



A leather carp, basically a mirror carp sub-species bred for eating, no scales at all, just a very thick skin. This one was around the 17lbs mark.

Hopefully some of you guys will take a shot at landing a few carp and find out just how much of a fight they can put up and if you see a guy wandering around, talking funny and waggling a long pole, it might be me.