The Hinged Stiff Rig
The hinged stiff rig is one of the most well known carp rigs going. It was developed in the 90s by anglers on the Yateley complex. Living in the Yateley area at the time, I got to hear about the rig fairly early on, and have used it an awful lot since. It’s always served me well; I’d guess at least 80% of my twenty plus fish have fallen to it!
It is important to use it in the right circumstances, I limit it’s use to large boilie pop ups, fished over boilies only, or away from particle baited areas – it’s an awesome rig for single hookers too. It doesn’t present the hookbait low enough for fishing over particle, and the heavyweight components need a good sized, buoyant hookbait to balance them out; you really need to be using corkballers with this one to get the best from it. It’s ideal when fishing are dipping down to pick up baits, and moving between them. I especially love the fact that the big size five stiff rigger stays put when it goes in, you rarely get hook pulls with this rig!
My version is a little different to some, but all the ideas are liberally thieved from other people! The end tackle is a helicopter rig, with a flexi ring swivel trapped between ESP rubber beads on leadcore and stopped by a short length of 0.5mm silicone.
The “boom” section of the rig is about 6” of 15Ib snake bite (thank you Adam Penning!!) which is attached slightly unusually. I tie a figure of eight loop in one end, and poke this through the swivel to lasso the rig on. This allows me to have several rigs pre tied up, and allows me to attach new rigs without crinkling up the snakebite (I am obsessive about changing rigs between fish). The end of the snakebite is tied to the ring of a small flexi ring swivel. Handily, the little ESP swivels perfectly balance out my preferred 14mm pop ups! |
The hook end of the rig is made from 20Ib ESP stiff rig bristle filament. This is knotless knotted to s size 5 ESP Stiff Rigger hook, with the tag end being passed back through the eye of the hook and blobbed with a lighter to form a D-rig. Attaching this to the little swivel on the end of the snakebite is tricky, as the SRBF section should be around 2 or 3” long, or less.
The Wychwood crimps make this a doddle, but the extra flexibility can allow the rig to lie flat on the bottom, which ruins part of the rigs effectiveness. I now prefer to use a two turn blood knot with a blob on the tag, which is as strong as you like, and allows you to tie it up nice and short. Once it is all tied up, I steam it up to get it thoroughly straightened, and then store it in a rig board.
Once it’s ready to use, I attach it to the end gear, and then use my thumb nail to form an aggressive curve in the SRBF (thank you Mr Hearn!!). If putty is needed to balance it all out, it MUST be moulded around the top of the swivel, not on the bottom. This means the rig is a little unstable, and tends to tip over when touched. This makes it dip down in the mouth.
The aggressive curve, with a swivel at the bottom, allows the rig to spin round when picked up (dangle the rig upside down and touch the curve – it swings straight round). Combined, this means that the rig spins and dips as it is picked up, hooking consistently in the bottom lip. Pop one in a bowl of water, and try and pick it up with your fingers – it is difficult not to hook yourself! The snakebite boom forces it away at full extension to the lead, giving quick contact with the lead and also allows it to settle over uneven bottoms – by sliding up the stop, I’ve even taken fish from the middle of weedbeds.
So that’s my version of the Hinge Rig. It may well be very complicated in comparison to some rigs, but every component is carefully thought out and has a job to do. I use it for almost all my pop up fishing, with total confidence. I honestly think that this is the most effective pop rig I could be using. In fact so confident am I in the components that I’ve just spent a small fortune buying up all the size five Stiff Riggers I can find just in case the new version isn’t up to scratch…. |
