Atomic Tackle

I have been happily using the Atomic range of products since they started up and feel that their range of leads have given me an edge over other anglers, especially since the Stone Gravel and Dung range were developed.

Here are two of the more common rig set-ups that I use and have caught many fish on in recent times. The first is what I would normally use in an edge or stalking situation. Rightly or wrongly, I’m a believer in short rigs. I spend a lot of my fishing time watching fish in the edge, how they feed, how they react in different situations, the way they feed around/react to certain baits etc, and I’ve had my better results using the short rigs, even in the thickest silt! There’s nothing fancy about the set-ups, they’re fairly straight forward as I think it’s more about where you put it at the end of the day

As you can see I have the leadcore leader attached to a flexi-swivel, then have the rig attached to the bigger ring. I slide a small bit of tubing over the swivel but not touching the big ring to allow free movement of the rig.

The only fiddly bit I have is where I then slide a ring over the tubing and first loop of the swivel. You need to gently squeeze it with forceps to create an oval shape, then once it’s in place squeeze it back so that it can’t pass back over the loop. To this ring I then tie on my lead with light line, so that it falls off whilst playing the fish.

The idea is to use a heavy lead (5oz+) to set the hook, but obviously a lead that size doesn’t do you any favours when playing a fish on a short rig!

The next set-up is generally what I would use for fishing a bit further out in the pond. Its’s a very simple helicopter set-up with a 6ft leadcore leader.

Again, the only difference is that I attach leadcore to a ring and again tie my leads on. The only time I tend to have the leadcore going direct to the lead is if there’s nowhere for a fish to get snagged or weeded. As you can see from the pictures, I also remove the swivel from the leads as I don’t like the amount of movement the swivel allows.

Nothing too tricky there, both set-ups are very, very simple but have caught me lots of fish over the past few seasons.