This month, Bill Cottam lifts the lid on his rig box. Never a slave to fashions, trends or brands, and always open and honest, he explains what he uses and why

BY BILL COTTAM

Give ’em something to eat!

PHOTOGRAPHY BILL COTTAM AND FRIENDS

I THINK IT’S FAIR TO SAY that I have probably built up something of a reputation for myself over the years with regard to the rigs and hookbait presentations I use, but in all honesty, I doubt very much that it is the type of reputation that would have most people bristling with pride. I get endless hours of entertainment from perpetuating the myth that my rigs are incredibly basic and of no use to anybody, of course, but truth be told, although my rigs are not exactly fraught with what I consider to be unnecessary complexity, I do give an enormous amount of thought and consideration to the components I use to construct them, and to getting the mechanics of the presentation right.

Rigs and baits will always be indisputably linked, but I have always been very much of the opinion that a great number of anglers totally miss the point that highly complex hooking arrangements are only really necessary when the carp you are fishing for do not have total confidence within the feeding situation that you have created for them.

Surely, it stands to reason that a fish which is inspecting every individual item of food with suspicion, is far more likely to identify, and consequently reject the bait which has the hook attached, than a carp which is confidently eating everything in its path would ever dream of doing. Although there are some notable exceptions—such as when single hookbait fishing or stalking—that is, in essence, the thought process on which virtually all of my carp fishing is based: get them feeding on a bait that they readily accept as a food source, and you are undoubtedly well on the way to achieving at least a degree of success!

I am not suggesting for a minute that I do not consider rigs to be important, of course, because quite obviously they are a vital piece of the overall carpcatching jigsaw. But unlike many would appear to, I do not spend half of my life worrying about whether the hooking arrangement I have chosen to use is right for the job.

To cut a long story short, although I do have a tendency to fine-tune and tweak things from time to time, generally speaking, I experiment with hookbait presentations very little. I have no need to… I have total belief in the rigs I have been using for the last ten or twelve years! Having said that, I assure you that I would be first in the queue should a new presentation come along that would guarantee me another twenty carp every season, or give me an increased pick-up–to–hooking ratio.

“I am living proof that average, decidedly uncomplicated rigs still catch a few!”

Nobody will ever convince me that longer hooklengths don’t help you to be big-fish selective

The truth is, though, no one has ever convinced me that such a thing exists for the style of fishing I generally adopt. That’s not to say that my approach converts every pick-up to a hooked carp, of course. In these days of carp that are ridiculously over-fished for, and venues that receive such relentless, non-stop pressure, no rig will ever offer you a success rate like that. Also, in all honestly, I can’t remember the last time I got well and truly stuffed by the angler in the next swim, and was forced to go home thinking that I had been outcaught because my rigs were in some way less effective than, or not as technically advanced as theirs.

Before I move on from the inevitable link between bait application and rig effectiveness, I thought I should perhaps offer my brief thoughts on the aspect I consider of most importance to the carp angler…

As I have mentioned already, both bait and rigs undoubtedly have a huge part to play, but at the end of the day, if the fish you are attempting to catch have no interest whatsoever in eating your bait—or more specifically, your hookbait—the most effective rig in the world isn’t going to make even the slightest bit of difference to your catchrate. Conversely, I am living proof that average, decidedly uncomplicated rigs still catch a few!