Getting The Lead Out

It is not feasible to try and cover each and every possible scenario and combination in this article so this info should be used as a general guide and own discretion should be used based on the guideline provided. My experience stems for the most part of fishing specimen style carp for a solid 22 years and having owned a lead production company for 10 of those years, and by sharing the research done to develop the products readers should be able to better understand the importance of the lead system and how it can benefit his or her fishing to ultimately put more carp on the mat and less dropped or lost fish. I hope to convey the knowledge built up over years to better help anglers choose wisely when stocking up on leads and not fall for a sales pitch and be swayed by supposed bells and whistles, and rather choose a functional piece of kit vital to the optimal performance of the gear we treasure so greatly. Shapes: As humans we like symmetry - we like things to match – so as anglers we tend to equip all rods with the same lead so they all look “nice”, and we fish them spread out all over our angling zone, often making the mistake of having the wrong lead on for the job it’s supposed to do. As an example, you have chosen 4 x 4oz torpedo-shaped leads for your setup and doing your feature finding find your first spot 100m out on a hard gravel bed in 10m of water, spots 2 and 3 on a muddy flat at 60m in 3m of water and your last spot 20m off the bank on a drop-off or slope in 2m of water. You bait up, cast your rods and you are fishing… But in fact only one of those rods is fishing: rod #1 is most likely fishing, #2 and #3 are buried in the mud and #4 made so much disturbance that it will only be in the early hours of the morning that it might get attention, if it in fact has not irritated you with false bleeps so much that you choose to cast it deeper. The lead choice was wrong for the areas fished: #2 and # were shallow so a torpedo-shaped lead is going hit the water at high speed and bury itself in the mud; #4 is on a slope and a 4oz torpedo lead is going to slide down the slope or roll and keep tightening, in the process producing false bleeps. The actual choice should have been 4oz for #1 to get distance and holding weight at range, a #2.5- 3oz flat pear for #2 and #3 on the soft mud that wont dig in deep and settle on the mud, and a 1-2oz gripper for #4 as the cast won’t cause disturbance and the lead will hold place on the slope. Only then would all four rods be fishing! The shape you choose needs to be based on what kind of lake bed you are fishing on, as each shape has a specific job it was designed to do. Available is a vast array of different shapes and sizes. Colour: Arguably the most overrated and most controversial aspect of choosing a lead is its colour. Many theories and arguments exist on the topic and many a social media war has been started because of this, but there are a few fundamentals that cannot be disputed and have to be taken into consideration. Water clarity is probably the most influential aspect, purely because if the water is muddy or dirty, it does not matter what color lead you use as it’s going to be dark down there anyway, and the carp will mainly rely on its other senses than sight to find food. Water depth as this also plays a role in the visibility, depending on the water clarity obviously. Let’s say your chosen venue has gin-clear water and you find the fish holding in 10m of water. Chances are that a lead coated in dark brown and which looks amazing out of the water will look totally different at depth as the deeper you go in clear water everything tends to take on a blue hue and it would most likely appear greenish in colour. Bright Red on the other hand takes on a purplish brown colour, and this change increases with depth so that at 50m down Black, Brown and Red all have a Black to Charcoal Grey colour, whereas Yellow and Green both resemble Olive Green. In discoloured (dirty) water it does not matter as colour will not be visible. Shallow water that is gin clear is another ball game and you have to match the lead to the bottom as best you can to camouflage the setup. In 3m all the colours look the same albeit matt as opposed to the shiny, out-of-water finish most leads have. Here it is important to know what kind of bottom you are fishing on to be able to match the lead to the lake bed as far as possible and not have it stand out. A good rule of thumb is to always stick on the darker side if a venue or lake is old as the likelihood of debris being almost black is a good assumption, and a lead cast in will most likely look like just another rock or stick or piece of wood that has settled on the lake bed. Then you have weedy waters where an Olive-green lead will likely mimic a clump of broken off weed or mossy rock that tends to look on the Yellow side to human eyes. So colour of the lead though important all depends on the situation and where you are fishing. Choose the right colour for the bottom you are fishing on. Weight: Not to become very technical and mathematical, I will refer to leads weight in ounces - 1oz = 28.3g so you can calculate the relevant weights in your own time. I was often asked “how heavy should my leads be?”Obviously we use the lead as the main contributing factor in hooking the fish so the consensus is as heavy as you can get away with. But there are a few limiting factors - it is dependent on how you present the rig, by boat, baitboat or casting. I will assume for this article that most anglers will be casting, because by boat or baitboat you can attach a brick as a weight as long as you can get past the tangles. The rule of thumb for choosing the maximum weight that you can safely cast without damaging your tackle is to take the test curve of your rod and convert it directly to ounces plus 1. For example: if your rod has a test curve of 3lbs, you covert it as follows: 3lbs - 3oz +1 = 4oz. So 4oz is the maximum casting weight that that rod can handle safely. If you want to push it further because you feel you know your tackle, that is up to you and I take no responsibility for damages. This calculation is very important when fishing with method feeders because you can easily work out how big your method balls must be and you can actually make them beforehand and recast so much quicker. The rod has a 3.5lbs test curve, converts to 3.5oz +1 = 4.5oz, your method feeder weighs 2oz, so 4.5 -2 = 2.5oz, so you can weigh out method balls ahead of time weighing 2.5oz and have them ready to press the feeder into and recast and you know your weight ratio is spot on every time (just for interest sake that is almost a fist-sized feed ball). However the weight of a lead determines its size and this should be taken into account when fishing close in or on softer bottoms - don’t scare the fish by casting a great big chunk of lead to the reeds 15m in front of your rod tips. As in hunting, choose your caliber wisely, and less is most often more. Different coating powders are available to custom your own weights. Connection System: Various connection systems are available, this is the lead clip version. There are 2 main connection systems, via a swivel or ring to a safety clip, and the in-line connection. I focus more on the safety clip system as it is far more prevalent. The In-line system involves the line or leader passing directly through the lead like the conventional weights still used by most anglers today with a hole right through the body of the lead; the difference is that the specimen in-line leads have a larger bore at one end as opposed to the other to enable a rubber sleeve of sorts to seat in the lead to enable the swivel to be pulled in tight and stay put for the cast, but pulls out during the fight so making it safer for the fish. This system should UNDER NO CIRCUMSTANCES be fished in snaggy situations as you will get snagged on the take. Unless you have a drop-off in-line lead that falls off the line completely and immediately with the take, this system is not recommended for novice or beginner anglers just getting into carp angling. The Safety clip system is designed to be safe (I won’t get into the discussion on how anglers make it unsafe because they are not willing to dump the lead on the take). It consists of the safety clip and tail rubber. The safety clip is the part the lead attaches to, either via a swivel attached to a loop molded into the lead, or via the ring also attached via a loop molded into the lead. Each has its own benefits: a swivel provides more movement of the rig and safety clip; once the carp takes the bait and contacts the weight of the lead and a ring, while still enabling the safety clip to lay flat on the bottom providing less movement, so the carp impacts the weight of the lead sooner resulting in a faster hookup. The disadvantages of a swivel often comes in exactly for the same reasons - if the lead manufacturer uses smaller swivels or barrel swivels to save costs these swivels do not always fit safety clips properly, and can get stuck so the clip cannot eject the lead. Barrel swivels also have a tendency to tangle in the rigs because of the twisted wire below the ring of the swivel. The disadvantages of the rings is that you will dump the lead 100% of the time on the pickup, which can become costly in replacing leads on a regular basis. The reason for this is that the ring bore is so large that it forces the tail rubber off with minimal pressure and ejects freely; the lead also hangs down freely before the cast and not at some weird angle as I have seen in many photos because the swivel eye is too small for the safety clip. Companies like Korda have started introducing rings into their lead range which is great, but as far as I know (I stand to be corrected) the first leads for carp fishing commercially produced with rings were first produced in South Africa by a company still producing today (local is lekker!).