Kev Hewitt has been doing rather well on his version of arguably one of the most effective rigs of all time – the Hinged Stiff Rig. Here he gives us the lowdown…
Although the hinged stiff rig has been around for donkey’s years, the very fact that it still figures in many top carp anglers armoury is a testament of just how effective the rig is at catching bigger carp.
I have to be honest and hold my hand up and confess to having not used the rig all that much in the past but in recent times it is a rig that figures more and more in my angling and the results have been impressive. I have made a few little tweaks and come up with a hinged stiff rig that works for me. The mechanics are very much the same as the traditional version but the components are a little different.
The hinged stiff rig certainly isn’t a rig for all occasions but it does have a time and a place. When scattering bigger items such as boilies or sweetcorn on clear bottom or light debris the hinged stiff rig is the perfect presentation. The rig works best when carp are picking baits up one at a time and the fact that the hookbait is popped up off the bottom it makes it the faultless when fishing over light debris such as dead weed or leaf matter. If the lakebed is weedier then I would opt for a chod rig presentation.
The business end on my hinged stiff rig consists of an ESP readymade chod rig. For cleaner bottom I always use the short chod rigs and if there is more debris or light weed then I will always switch to the longer chod rig to get the bait just at little bit further off the bottom.
I then use ESP Super floss to attach my hookbait. If boilie fishing I will either use a cork ball pop up that matches my freebies that I have loose fed or I will offer a bright Flouro CCMoore Northern Special over the top. At times I like to fish over a scattering of sweetcorn at which point I will use two grains of ESP Big buoyant corn for a hookbait. Once the chosen hookbait is attached I mould ESP Putty round the swivel and test the rig in the margins until the bait sinks and sits up off the swivel.
For the boom section I use a loop knot to attach 25Lb ESP Stripteaze Two Tone coated hooklength instead of the more popular Bristle filament that gets used more often than not. Firstly braids have a higher knot strength and the Two Tone has an incredible achievable knot strength of around 35Lb breaking strain (despite being stated as 25Lb) so it will never let you down. I would class Stripteaze Two Tone as a semi stiff braid, it is not as stiff as bristle filament but stiffer than many of the coated braids on the market yet it still maintains an incredibly thin diameter (25Lb 0.52mm). I attach the coated braid to the ring swivel of the chod rig with a simple overhand loop knot and keep the knot fairly small. The loop knot is what gives the rig the hinge that allows the carp to suck up the hookbait before the rig tightens and sets the hook.
I then slide an ESP Streamliner rig boom up the boom section and finish the rig off with another loop knot for quick change purposes. I tend to keep the boom section fairly short at around 6-8 inches. Once I have attached the rig to a quick change swivel on a lead clip set up, I slide the Streamliner rig boom down over the swivel. This is a very important part of the rig as it kicks the rig away from the lead every time so that the hookbait is always as far away from the lead as possible. This not only makes the rig near on impossible to tangle, but ensures perfect presentation every cast.
I am a big fan of shorter hooklengths. I tend to think that the quicker the hooklength tightens to the lead once the bait is in the carp’s mouth, the more chance you have of hooking it.
To finish the rig off I use one of two lead clips which are set up on leadcore leaders of around 75cm in length. I use an ESP Ejector lead clip when fishing in a situation where there may be big weed beds around and I need to eject the lead. This without doubt gives you the best chance of landing a fish when the lake is weedy as they come straight to the top as soon as they are hooked and tend to stay on the surface during the remainder of the fight.
For the most part though, I use an ESP Adjustable lead clip to a leadcore leader. These lead clips are much more practical for most of my angling as the last thing I want to do is to lose the lead unnecessarily.