The Blow Back Rig Explained - by Colin Walford
A Little while back, I wrote a piece on The Blow Back Rig and how I use it in my day to day angling. The Idea of this follow up article is to explain how I use the rig, the components used to make the rig and why it works for me.
As I stated before, this rig is very simple to tie up and through a little of bit of tinkering, and use of different rig components, I have finally settled on what I feel will do the best job of hooking a carp for me.
As I said, it’s an easy rig to tie up. Start by taking around 12 inches of your chosen hook link material, in my case, I’m using Gardner Tackles Sly Skin in 15lb. It offers me a tough, but supple material that will lay on any lake bed and stay flat to it.
Peel around 5 inches of the outer coating from the hook link and make a small loop at the end of the braid. I like to then thread my hook bait/s on next; I do it because I want to line up where I’m going to tie the small Gardner Covert 3mm ring onto the braid. I want the ring to be sitting on the shank of the hook opposite the hook point, this, when the baits are on, gives an angle of around 45 degrees kicking the hook baits away from the shank of the hook. This I feel gives the rig an edge, it makes the hook point ‘heavy’ and is more liable to catch the bottom of the carp’s mouth. To accentuate this, I add a small (10mm) piece of shrink tube over the eye and whipping of the hook shank and shrink down with a slight curve using a Solar Rig Cone.
After this is complete, you should be left with a 5mm section of braid below the shrink tube. This is also an important factor which I will explain shortly.
All that’s left to do now, is thread onto the hook link a Large Korda Sinker, and mould some Gardner Critical Mass Putty around the sinker and tie an overhand loop at the open end after deciding what length you want your hook link to be. I will fish this rig as short as four inches and as long as 16 inches depending on the type of bottom I’m fishing over, i.e. I will use a much longer hook link when angling over deep silt, and I will shorten it down when fishing over gravel, or against pads/snags etc. I then attach the hook link to a Thinking Anglers Chod Ring Swivel (it has a ring at each end) by looping the loop through the eye of the ring and threading it back through on itself. I like this because it’s easier to change the link if you blunt the hook and also it’s not a knot and hasn’t let me down.
Ok, hopefully I haven’t confused anyone on tying the rig up! You will be able to see from the pictures that it is pretty simple, I promise!
The mechanics of the rig work like this! I prefer to use the hook baits as a snowman setup, and I will trim both baits down till they are just sinking very slowly through the water. Not only does this make the baits go into the fishes mouth quicker when it sucks, it definitely aids the hooking potential because of the angle we created with ring making the baits ‘Stand off’ the hook shank, which in turn has already created a ‘heavy’ hook point. On the subject of hooks, I really must emphasize using a curved hook for this rig. You just don’t get the same mechanics using a straight pattern hook, and I use Gardner Covert Muggas, either in 6’s or 8’s. As I mentioned earlier, below the shrink tube is a 5 mm section of the stripped back braid. This is as important as the sinker/putty around 3 inches further back up the link. The idea behind these is that as the carp sucks the baits into its mouth and the hook point is hanging, the hook link will more than likely be lifting off the bottom of the lake bed and the weight of the putty in conjunction with the braid hinge will increase the likely hood that the hook point will be finding the bottom area of the carps mouth! Don’t forget, that all this will be happening at great speed as the fish feeds and you want to give yourself as much chance as possible on hooking the carp!
To finish off, I’ve been thinking that perhaps I should change the name of the rig to The Ring Stand Off rig, as this is exactly the scenario I’m after. You see the very first Blow Back Rig, was invented by Kevin Nash back in the 80’s and incorporated a straight shank hook and a large ring. The idea being that when a fish picked up the bait and blew out to eject the rig, the large ring would slide back over the eye of the hook, completely taking the hook bait out of the way leaving just the hook inside the fishes mouth, and hooking it.
I have used both rigs to good effect over the years, and although I’m not an angler in the same league as Kevin Nash, I would like to think that I have evolved the original rig to tailor to the waters that I fish because the carp are perhaps that much cuter. The hanging hook on my rig has certainly caught me a fair few of the Sutton 2 carp and I’m proud that I have done it on a rig that I have modified to suit my needs!
Give it a bash this year, and please drop us a line at Scattered Baits if you have any questions on anything, but hopefully you will be using the rigs and bait to great effect and letting us know of your captures!
Thanks for reading, cheers and tight lines!
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