THE AGGRESSIVE CHOD RIGThis month, previous CARPology cover star, Toby Long reveals his extreme version of the Chod Rig

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carpology.net 025May 2013carpology.net024 May 2013

H O W TO. . . C R E A T E T H E P E R F E C T A G G R E S S I V E C U R V E

Take a length of your Chod Rig material and hook and connect the hook using a Six-Turn

Knotless Knot, leaving a short tag to form your ‘D’. Now take a large size rig ring and thread it onto the tag, passing it through the eye of the hook and blob with a lighter. The big rig ring allows lots of movement for your bait.

Next take a size 11 Ring Swivel (although ball bearing-type swivels are better as they

rotate much smoother) and pass it onto the other end of the hooklink and tie a small Overhand Loop Knot and pull down tight. Now take your thumb and forefi nger and rub the hooklink material to warm it up.

With one hand, hold the knot (loop) that attaches your swivel and the other the

whipping on the hook and slowly but gently fl ex the hooklink material into a curve. You want to start curving one end of the rig fi rst – if you try doing the whole thing in one go it’ll kink and won’t sit straight and neat.

Start the curve gradual and slowly fl ex it into a more aggressive angle. This will take time so

don’t rush it because like we’ve just mentioned, you will kink the Riga-Mortis material.

As you rub the rig, keep checking to make sure the curve is straight and not kicking

the hook out at an aggressive angle. The hooklink material needs to be curved straight.

Once your curve is aggressive and straight, tie on your chosen super buoyant pop-up. Make sure

you not only check the sharpness of your hook after every cast but you also check the curve of your Chod.

he MK3 Chod, or as it’s also known, the Aggressive Chod Rig, is a further development from the MK2 but

without the mini boom section. If it were compared to any other rig it would be similar to the angle achieved with the Withy Pool Rig. With the hook sitting at this particular angle means the point is automatically pointing aggressively into the carp’s bottom lip, ready to prick as it decides to move o� . Unlike some other versions of the Chod, I like to keep the total length of the rig quite short, to around two-and-a-half-inches and the curve has been done at a much more aggressive angle

T

Toby with a brute

nailed on an Aggressive

Choddy

– hence the pet name it’s been given. By having this extreme sweeping angle in the hooklink material, it does mean you have to construct the rig in a slightly di� erent manner to a regular Chod Rig. For example, when using a Blood Knot coupled with the aggressive curve, the swivel kicks out at an awkward angle, so in order to eliminate the problem and add further movement, a small Loop Knot is used to attach the hooklink to the swivel. When you cast out any rig, the bait gives a noticeable amount of drag, so in this case the bait could pull the hooklink straighter during fl ight, ruining your lovely curve you’ve just worked in. In order to stop this happening, you need to use

a really sti� material and one which I have been around with recently is ACE Carp’s Riga-Mortis in the 25lb breaking strain version, and although it’s very sti� – great for holding its shape even on the longest of casts – you can also manipulate it perfectly into shape. So it seems every angler in the UK has been engulfed into ‘Chodmania’ with it now being the country’s number 1 pop-up presentation (source: CARPology Facebook poll), fi shing it di� erently to the norm with a super aggressive curve and a loop knot tied to the swivel may seem alien to many, but it’s a ploy that can be super e� ective – and this is how you curve this devastating adaptation!

The bits and pieces Tobes uses

S H O P P I N G L I S TT H E B I T S A N D P I E C E S Y O U N E E D

1 Some sti� hooklink material – we’d recommend ACE’s Riga-Mortis which is very easy to work with.

2 Chod style hooks. I’ve played around with both beaked and straight-pointed Chod style hooks and I have to say I prefer the latter. The new Razor Points from ACE have been designed hand-in-hand with Terry Hearn and are extremely sharp.

3 Like I have mentioned in the step-by-step below, opt for a larger rig ring over a smaller one – this will allow for more movement.

4 Finally, if you can, opt for a ball bearing-type swivel, as they rotate so much smoother than standard ring swivels.

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