John Bailey – The Kingfisher Diaries
May 24th 2010
A Question of Rigs
It's well known that I am the self-appointed leader of the Tench Gang on the main Kingfisher Lake. At present, the tench fishing isn't particularly exploited and it is remarkably good. I like to think, as tench fisher, we are not particularly interfering with the carp boys who have the first say to the swims, of course. We're tending to fish close - rarely more than fifteen or twenty yards so we are not adding to the traffic build-up at long range. By and large, therefore, I have always hoped our impact on the fishery is minimal.
HOWEVER, I was DISMAYED to be told that one of the carp was recently caught towing around what was obviously one of our tench rigs. There are several worrying issues. I suppose the first and obvious one is that this particular rig, whoever it was that was using it, was not safe. Rigs, as we know, should break up if there is a problem so a fish is not towing harmful weights around the lake. In this case, this did not happen and we will have to reassess totally the rigs we are using.
But this is really interesting. All of us went through our records and we genuinely can't remember hooking and losing what was obviously a carp. However, on a couple of occasions, we have cracked off on the strike letting the feeder and hook bait fly free into the lake. Now, normally this would not matter but, as many carp anglers know, we are using predominantly plastic maggots on the hook. 
You see where I'm coming from. Had we have stuck with normal maggots, these would have either deteriorated or been pecked off by small fish and not proven a problem. But plastic maggots, of course, are pretty well indestructible, can lie in the water for weeks or months and always run this chance of being picked up by a carp.
This is a big issue. Our fish already have enough to worry about from otters, disease and the normal stresses of life without having to concern themselves with plastic maggots!
It reminds me of a river that I used to dive up in Scotland. Very close to the outflow of a dam there was a cable across the river and attached to this cable were endless spinners lost by anglers. Diving was a sobering experience. On virtually every spinner was impaled a long-dead trout each of which had taken a lure and then endured a lingering death.
It's the duty of all of us to consider very carefully what we do with our fishing.