Anatomy Of A Carp Rig | Mark Holmes' Slip-D Multi Rig (Video)

I’ve long been associated with my tactics surrounding bait, but rarely ever get asked about rigs. Now, of course your bait and how you use it plays a huge role in getting a carp to actually pick up your rig in the first place, but let me tell you, rigs play just as much importance in actually putting that carp on the bank. This is a rig I have caught numerous big fish on; Its reliable, effective and simple to tie.

Many people extol the virtues of a self-resetting rig and I too believe this is of utmost importance, providing you with many more chances at hooking a carp should your rig be ejected. With this in mind I prefer to use the 35lb Jelly Wire - it has just the right balance of stiffness and flex so as to kick out the rig without looping up off the bottom. This stiffness also improves the hooking efficiency of the rig by ensuring the lead comes into play as quickly as possible.

The rig is also extremely aggressive and the long, angled length of shrink tube ensures the hook will always spin and find purchase on the bottom lip. In fact I’ve found the hook-holds with this rig to be fantastic. Another very important component is the rig ring. Now all too often I see anglers favouring the micro rig rings on their rigs and I do agree that they look neater. However a large ring, this being 4mm in diameter, is simply much more effective due to providing the hookbait much more freedom of movement and separation from the hook. Furthermore these smaller rigs can often get clogged up with detritus from the lakebed rendering them useless.

During the summer months many of the waters I currently fish have large amounts of Gammarus, or water shrimp and for this reason I do like the addition of the shrimp aligner as a hair stop. Whether the carp picks up the rig because its switched onto the water shrimps or just eating the boilie regardless, its hard to say, but it certainly doesn’t hurt! This setup has caught me an awful lot of fish and I would say that any potential edges, no matter how small are always worth having.

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