Popped up Deadbaits

with a bit of work, you could mimic the french and attach your set up to a buoy of some form or description, either on a long hair or tied on with weak mono. with the buoy, the current cant pull the bait down. put your hooklink helicopter style on the vertical line with the lead on the bottom, and set the depth with the beads used for making a chod rig, basically set up like a giant marker float setup but with a hooklink on the vertical line. (sorry if i've just described the cat-o-copter, but it dont know how it works) that should ilimiate the use of polyballs or similar, too. i have used this rig when pike fishing in the river wey at Riply and there's a hell of a flow there. atb,Nick

The helicopter is the same sort of idea mate, its on the ccg site if you have a quick look. My thoughts was A swivel and a couple of foot of mono to the lead with the hooklink on a low resistance ring inbetween two pollyballs. The pollyballs run straight up to the swivel and it pulls the hooklink up with it. Will need some testing and the bait needs to be made neutral unless the flow is strong enough to keep the bait up. You could head hook a deadbait and thread a long hair down the length of the fish with a small baitpopper on the end if you get what i mean. So the hook is in the nose but a small foam popper is at the tail end to keep the fish up, this should stop it simply hanging there which I hate, its the most unnatural presentation there is in my opinion. How many times do you see a dead fish just hanging in the water? I want the bait to flutter flat in the current.

woah, this is all getting far too technical for me. if i was going to fish for thames cats i would just use a monster halibut pellet or giant boilie where there is carp and bream pressure or a bottom or surface fished deadbait where there ins't.

And you would probably catch, I just wanted to use the flow to maximum advantage. Have a look on the rigs page on the ccg, its an easy rig. I think in a flowing water a deadbait flowing in the current just off bottom in that cat hunting zone would be deadly. Bet its deadly for pike this time of year when they are ultra aggresive. It would save messing about trying to catch livebait which can be a pain.

true. have you considered fishing an adapted John Sidley Eel Rig, where the lead is attached to a piece of thick line with a swivel and polyball on the other end. that would keep the mainline away from the riverbed, and the current would force the deadbait behind the polyball instead of onto the lake bed so it wafts in the current like you want. you could alter the depth off the bottom you want the bait by the length of the 'boom' the lead is attached to.

Gonna have a play around with some rigs while I pike fish this winter to see how they react, like I said its a few years away this yet but it has been bugging me for a while now thats all.

why not use the fixed dumbell rig? It works for holding worms and dead baits just off bottom in lakes and in a river it would just stream nicely. I use super glue to attach the rig tube to the dumbell so it can't pull out. But one polyball is better than 2 on this rig otherwise it can up end.
Eric

toyed with this idea too. Have used it myself with a single pollyball on still waters, very good rig.

wat about hair rigging the dead straight in the middly cutting the tail end of the dead off put one pollyball in the mouth of it the other inside the tail end bait bandded in. then say three foot or so down the line have a small weight then a large lead tighten this would let the fish act as if it was dying in theory.

Cant quite picture that one at all.

al show ya wen we meet up m8

I would just pop the bait up off the lead. Would use a hair rig and a head half bait using the hair to secure the poly ball. Would pull the hair through the bait using a long baiting needle, then would put the polyball on the hair and secure it with a hair stop. Then i would pull the poly ball up inside the bait and then just hook the bait through the lips with the hook.