I’ve been playing around with this variation of a snowman presentation for a few years and along the way have made small adjustments too fine tune it. Although it’s not a new rig, in fact it’s been about for ages – it’s still very much underused, which is surprising really due to its versatility and hooking potential.
It was fishing on a small syndicate water that I first started to become interested in this rig due to the lake’s high stock of roach. The silvers had the habit of nailing just about any standard bottom bait presentation within an hour of being in the water. The only way I could find to prevent this was the use of a bigger hookbait, the obvious solution being 18mm or 20mm bottom baits, but as this lake was extremely silty the baits would almost completely sink into the silt. This is when I started to play around with the snow man rig and it instantly made a huge difference, but only in the fact that I was getting a good night’s sleep!
I had managed to stop the roach attacks but I still wasn’t getting amongst the carp. This really stumped me as the lake wasn’t big or low stock. In fact it was only a couple of acres and held one hundred odd carp, I really felt something was wrong. It wasn’t until one trip when I realised exactly what the problem was. After setting up I put my rods on the rests and with the rigs still attached from my previous trip I just lowered them in the edge to see if my presentation was balanced correctly. With that my phone has gone off and I ended up talking to my mate for ten mints or more. Chat done, I went down to pick up the rod and looked at the rig in the edge and I immediately noticed the problem. My coated braid hook link was stuck up out of the lake bed. It seemed that even after the relatively short amount of time that I had been on phone my rig had sunk into the silt and as the coated hook link being semi stiff it ended up stuck up out the silt looking horrendous. Now I knew why I hadn’t received any takes!
That trip I changed to a braided hooklink and had six in a night including two 30’s. The adaptation to my presentation issue had obviously solved the problem. The next small change came the following weekend when I received thirteen bites in a two nights!
With all that unexpected action I ran out of hooks, a serious school boy error! All I had on me was some Covert Chod hooks so that was what went out. The results were incredible! Although my catch rate didn’t go up the hook holds with Chod hooks were insane. I never lost a single fish whilst I fished that lake. Considering I had eighty odd fish in two seasons, I was very impressed not too suffer one hook pull and although this came about by accident through running out of hooks. I’m now very glad I stumbled across it!
After that I started to mess around using Covert Chod hooks for my normal bottom bait rig with a single bait and it didn’t have the same affect in fact I found the normal curve shank Covert Mugga hooks to be far more productive. The only reason I believe it works so well with a snowman rig is the fact that you’re using two baits that are heavier and as the carp picks up the bait the two baits fall back making the eye heavy and pushing the point forward in to the carps mouth. That’s only my theory though. All I know is I’ve never had hook holds like it before!
Here’s how I put the finished rig together:
1. Take 6-7 inches of braid – I really like the 20Ib Trickster Heavy for this. It’s very supple and doesn’t fray.
2. This is knotless knotted to a size 6 Covert Chod hook making sure to make a hair long enough to accommodate two baits.
3. Attach the hook link to the swivel on your chosen lead arrangement using a five turn grinner knot to a swivel.
It’s really that simple but I assure you a lethal rig with incredible hook holds.
Think this just goes to show that a rig so simple and inexpensive to put together can still be highly effective even if it’s not the ‘in vogue’ rig to be using!
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