At the outset of this article I'd just like to say please watch the video below that accompanies this piece, we should all try and avoid turning our carp rigs into death traps like the one below.
I was out carp fishing last week and I had a cracking day, I was on the fish and despite the high pressure conditions they were happy to feed. During the day I had a run and played a carp in to the net, I wasn't aware there was a problem until my lead and carp rig appeared with a ball of fishing line and the carp attached to another rig just a foot or two behind mine.
The carp was attached to a death rig, fortunately I was able to land the fish and free it from the potential death trap it was trailing.
The carp rig in question was an inline lead setup, my favourite carp rig by a mile and one I've landed thousands of carp on. I was saddened to see the angler who'd tied the rig had pinched a lead shot behind the tubing to make sure it was down on the deck. I couldn't believe what I was seeing, an inline lead system requires there to be nothing above the tubing, it needs to be free so the line can pull through the tubing and the lead and rig tubing can be dumped. Clearly if you pinch a lead shot behind the rig tubing it's not going to drop the lead.
I couldn't believe an angler could be so stupid as to do this yet here it was in front of me. I was so unhappy looking at the way this carp rig had been set up I decided to film the video that's in this article and write a piece to say please don't put any kind of lead shot on your line above rig tubing. If you need to pin your line down there are several types of backlead available, standard Sliding Backleads, Captive Back Leads and Flying Backleads. A flying backlead is the only type of lead that should be on your line above the rig, like the lead and rig tubing, a flying backlead will slide off your fishing line in the event of a break as will a sliding backlead.
It's so easy to turn a safe carp rig into a death rig, just one lead shot pinched on the line is enough with an inline lead system and I hope I've drawn your attention to this issue and made you think about what happens to your carp rigs and the carp in the event of a line breakage?. You should ask yourself if the lead weight will drop so the carp isn't swimming round with it, test your rig to make sure it's safe and if you see anyone pinching lead shot above their rig tubing please have a word with them and point them in the right direction, it may just save a carp's life.
If you're interested in how a carp rig should be set up please check out the my video on setting up an inline lead for carp fishing.
Tight Lines.
Mark.
