MY BEST TACTIC OF THE YEAR?
For carp, bream, tench and more it has to be the worm kebab!
BACK in 2012 I first experimented with short sections of worm on a hair rig while fishing for tench and bream.
In the following years I gradually improved and refined the technique, which became known as the ‘worm kebab’ rig.
I now reckon that this rig is the best big-fish set-up out there, and in the last couple of years it has stood head and shoulders above the many other rigs I use throughout the season.
As other anglers, such as Shaun Hodges, started to use a similar approach it soon became apparent that not only did the worm kebab catch a lot of tench, but it also accounted for a lot of carp.
It was beyond coincidence that tench anglers would regularly catch both more and bigger carp than many of the carp anglers fishing alongside them at venues such as Linear Fisheries.
This did not go unnoticed by a small number of carpers, and one or two adapted the approach extremely successfully.
Some were so successful that they won a number of the big carp competitions using worm kebabs.
I’m so confident in this rig that now it’s not just one I reserve for bream and tench fishing any more – and this year it has seen me catch my new carp pb of over 42lb!
WHY I LOVE THE HELI RIG
My preferred rig when tench fishing is a helicopter set-up. The Korum Ready Heli kits you can buy are based on a rig I’ve used for years, and throughout the spring I caught good numbers of tench on worm kebabs fished on heli rigs.
However, I use the same rig to fish with rubber maggots for tench, and one afternoon I hooked into something which clearly wasn’t my intended target.
2018 – MY YEAR OF SURPRISES
The fish started to move along the left-hand margin, and as I began to turn it and bring it towards the landing net it rolled about two rodlengths out – it was a big common.
After a surprisingly short tussle it came back towards me and I was able to juggle it into my tench net.
When I tried to lift the net it wouldn’t move, and I realised the fish might be bigger than I first thought, so I secured the net and sought assistance from the angler in the neighbouring swim.
Once it was on the mat we could see the girth of the fish and could see why I’d struggled to get it into a 32ins net.
The scales showed I was wrong, though – it wasn’t a thirty but a forty, weighing in at 42lb 8oz. Not bad for a tench rig!
CruCians Come Calling
After my tench fishing came to an end in late June I took the opportunity to fish a local pool for crucians.
I hadn’t fished for these for many a year and I was extremely grateful Ed Matthews had offered me the opportunity to fish his Shropshire syndicate lake.
The only bite of my trip came on a tiny cube of luncheon meat, and it was completely dark when the red starlight float moved across the surface before disappearing in the darkness.
The fight was short, and soon I had my first crucian for nearly 20 years enmeshed in my net.
At 3lb 8oz it dwarfed any I had caught previously, and left me looking forward to more regular crucian exploits.
Worm kebab is a Winner…
In mid-August I visited Linear Fisheries to target carp with a stepped-up version of the Heli rig, with the specific aim of catching carp on worm kebabs for my regular feature in Angling Times.
Mainline was increased to 15lb and I used a size 8 hook tied to a 12lb mono hooklink, coupled with my normal 2oz Combi-feeder.
With clear blue skies and no wind, conditions were far from ideal and the prospects of catching a fish on film using the new Korum Neoteric 2.2lb test curve rods were not looking good.
Just after 1pm a little cloud began to form and a light breeze began to put a slight ripple on the water’s surface.
I turned to my fishing partner Rob Hall, from Korum, and said if we were going to get one it would be within the hour, as I felt the change in the weather might trigger a fish or two to feed.
Twenty minutes later I had a run from what was clearly a carp, as the fish tore 20 yards of line off as it headed for the trees on the far side of the lake.
I managed to turn the fish just before it reached some overhanging branches and played it to the net.
Once again my prediction of an upper thirty was wrong, and this time it was a 41lb 12oz mirror carp… not a bad way to show worm kebabs fished on Heli rigs are well worth using for carp as well as tench!