Blowback Rig

To overcome problems with crafty carp sucking and blowing at a bait without bolting, a rig needed to be developed to overcome this problem or to at least identify that it is happening.

This is where the blowback rig comes into its own. On pressured waters where the carp are used to seeing all manner of different rigs they can sometimes be very cautious when feeding over a baited area. It has been proved that they will at times remain stationary once hooked instead of bolting away producing a screaming bite alarm. They will suck and blow at the rig in an effort to dislodge it from there mouth.

An angler sitting behind his rods may only receive the odd rod top knock or single bleep. Sometimes you will not even receive any indication at all. Don't fall into the trap however of thinking all carp behave in this manner.

This only occurs in the minority of cases, most times a carp once hooked will run. You can easily assume that every knock or bleep is a carp getting away with it but this is simply not the case. Bleeps and knocks can be caused by all manner of things including but not limited to... small fish playing with the bait, wind, crayfish and many others.

Your confidence can easily become effected by thinking this way and that will have a knock on effect in how effective you fish. Large lightly fished gravel pit carp that rarely see terminal tackle will have less reason to fear your set-up as much as a carp living in a heavily fished day ticket water. Having said that this rig can be used in many situations regardless of whether the fish are being crafty or not.

The way a carp will try to get rid of the hook is to suck water in through its mouth and then to violently eject water from its gills out through the mouth. With this rig the pivot point where the hair meets the hook means that as the carp sucks and blows the bait and hair can move in such a way that the hook point will be driven further in to the mouth parts.

You can replace the ring with a small piece of silicon tubing which will help you to identify whether you have had a pick-up as the tubing will have moved towards the eye. Boilies are the best option of hook bait, but there is no reason why this rig wouldn't work with particles.

Assembling the blowback rig

This is a simple but effective rig to tie. Begin by forming a hair using an overhand knot. Now attach a micro rig ring. Carefully place your hook point through the micro rig ring. Next, whip the hook on using the knotless knot. You can now if you wish use a small piece of shrink tubing to exaggerate the angle of the eye and shrink this over steam. You can fish this using a snowman type set-up or any combination you wish.