Looking back, Mart freely admits that his problem was getting too caught up in the detail, which he puts down to the fact that he’s a qualified engineer who loves a challenge, looking for perfection in whatever he turns his hand to. However, in relation to carping, the evidence showed that perhaps simplicity overshadowed perfection. As anglers we have a tendency to wax lyrical about the benefits of many new fangled methods and approaches, however, I much prefer to chuck a rig into the water and actually watch how the carp react to it, as surly that’s the key; regardless of our elaborate theories, it’s what carp think that counts, no?
With that in mind I use simple rigs for 99.9% of my fishing, and the image above shows the breakdown of components from the mainline right through to the hook for the braid set-up I use. My preferred hooklink is Rod Hutchinson Edge 2000 braid in 12lb breaking strain. At one end I tie a simple knotless knot hair and attach a small line aligner with shrink tubing before tying a small overhand loop knot at the other end for fitment to the gizmo. My terminal set-up is to feed the mainline through a tail rubber, safety clip and another cut-down tail rubber, and then tie to the eye on the the Gizmo link using a Palomar Knot; which I’ve found to be one of the strongest knots there is with minimal slip or strangulation.
Complete braid set-up; Keep it Simple!
Once the loop on the rig has been slipped onto the gizmo it’s simply a case of clipping on the weight and pulling the whole thing together. The result is a very simple, slimline, and extremely effective braid set-up. Depending on how I want the braid to sit, I may rub some rig putty up and down the hooklink to drop it on the lake bed, but more often than not I will leave it free as I favour critically balanced approaches that allow the bait to move about when under the scrutiny.
