How to correctly fish the lift method.

This forum is for discussing the Lift Method.
Locked
User avatar
Match Aerial
Arctic Char
Posts: 1661
Joined: Fri Dec 19, 2014 7:16 pm
9

Re: How to correctly fish the lift method.

Post by Match Aerial »

The Taylor method is the same method john Wilson uses.
Descriptions for setting up and using are the same in both these two authors books.

User avatar
Nobby
Wild Carp
Posts: 10975
Joined: Sun Oct 02, 2011 2:40 pm
12
Location: S.W.Surrey
Contact:

Re: How to correctly fish the lift method.

Post by Nobby »

I haven't read much Walker, but on other forums when this subject has been raised I was told Walker didn't drive home the point about the float falling sideways so much? Certainly Wilson labours the point quite strongly in his "Go Fishing Techniques".

User avatar
Match Aerial
Arctic Char
Posts: 1661
Joined: Fri Dec 19, 2014 7:16 pm
9

Re: How to correctly fish the lift method.

Post by Match Aerial »

I don't have any walker books,but did Walker use the antenna method for the lift technique?.
If that is so stands to reason why Walker would never have the float falling over if the method he advocated was used with two locking shots.
Please correct me if I am wrong about walker

MA

User avatar
Nobby
Wild Carp
Posts: 10975
Joined: Sun Oct 02, 2011 2:40 pm
12
Location: S.W.Surrey
Contact:

Re: How to correctly fish the lift method.

Post by Nobby »

Well he did like Bill Watson's 'lift-dip' floats, but I don't know if he used them for the 'lift', I'm afraid.

User avatar
Phil Arnott
Crucian Carp
Posts: 994
Joined: Wed Oct 09, 2013 2:21 pm
10
Location: East Yorkshire

Re: How to correctly fish the lift method.

Post by Phil Arnott »

I’ve enjoyed reading this debate so I thought I’d add my experiences.

Tench can be incredibly difficult at times and don’t easily fall for crude techniques or insensitive set ups. I’ve always regarded the lift method as crude as many of the tench I’ve fished for would simply feel the weight of a large shot and drop it like a hot potato and shoot off like a scalded cat.

I remember watching a friend of Kev Clifford’s, Mally Roberts (an excellent angler who is known in carp circles) using the lift method for tench in a local park. The float bobbed up and down laid flat and disappeared and it didn’t matter at which point Mally struck not a single fish was hooked.

A more sensitive arrangement than the traditional lift method can be made by having the bottom shot just off the bottom so it is in balance with the float. In this case a slight upward force applied by the fish is only met with a slight resistance. The bottom shot can also be a small shot or a string of tiny shot as is used in some pole rigs. A string of tiny shot with some laid on the bottom may also work. In all these arrangements the float should be an antenna with a fine tip so as to give a good indication. Having said that, over the years, I’ve found that much of the time striking at a lift results in a missed bite and I almost invariably wait for the float to slide under.

I’ve had a lot of success with tench using a pole which allows the most sensitive set up. Interestingly and contrary to the quotes about covering the hook from Faddists book in the “worms and how to fish them” thread, when fishing with maggot, sliding a maggot over the hook shank rather than leaving it bare resulted in less dropped baits.

The alternative to sensitive techniques is to use the bolt rig with a lead or heavy feeder where the method relies on the fish ejecting the bait and panicking

User avatar
Blunderer
Bleak
Posts: 144
Joined: Fri Sep 13, 2013 12:39 pm
10
Location: West Yorkshire

Re: How to correctly fish the lift method.

Post by Blunderer »

Firebird wrote:I've never read Wilson's books but the stuff about cantilevers is plainly nonsense. Floats don't suddenly develop the power to raise shot, it's the fish that does that. If you want a more "sensitive" set up, just use a smaller shot near the hook, with which, as Phil says, you'll need a thinner float if you're going to see anything. There is nothing special about the "lift method"; people have ben getting lift bites for years before all that filled the magazine articles.

Bolt rigs were around long before the carp anglers "invented" them too. The London match anglers use to fish a feeder locked in position with a short hook length called the "hanger method" - "they fahkin hang theirselves" as one articulate chap said to me once. A bolt rig for dace then. Whether it worked as believed is another matter.
Yes that's right. There's a lot of misunderstanding of how a bolt rig works on this thread, and the sentiment that only carp can be feasibly fished for with a bolt rig is plainly nonsense. The most successful specimen hunters regularly use bolt rigs, with or without a hair, for roach, Rudd, crucians and even pike.

The large lead on a classic carp fishing bolt rig is to induce the panic/ 'run', as much as the self-hooking of the fish. That's why many really wily carp have learnt not to bolt when they feel themselves pricked. They will actually stay still so as not to move the lead, and use the weight of the lead to eject the hook without moving it. And it isn't the carp 'closing its mouth' as stated above which causes the hook to prick the fish, it is usually the act of attempting to reject the rig with an open mouth.

I stand by my original premise: all anglers are striking into fish which in many cases are already hooked. If you fish for barbel with a running rig in a river I'd say it hooks itself nearly every time, hair rig or not. The use of a hair rig means that the hook will catch better, because it will spin/tilt easier when in motion in the mouth, and also the point is not obscured.

I think the sniffiness about bolt rigs which some anglers have is one eyed, self-limiting and born of sentimentality rather than ethics. And also a contempt of a different type of fishing culture if we are being really honest. If you think a rig which hooks the fish for you is ethically wrong, perhaps you shouldn't be fishing. Because that is what you are doing many many times.

To repeat my earlier point. When I was a lad fishing maggots for perch, roach, trout etc you'd regularly be chatting or larking about, turn round, wonder where your float was gone, lift the rod to find a fish five yards from where it had hooked itself. Not every time of course. Some times they manage to blow it back out when you don't strike, especially if your hook isn't that sharp or you are using a big bait on a small hook. But a significant percentage of times, dependant on specie or method, they hook themselves. And that unquestionably includes fishing the lift float where the big shot acts in a similar way to what is known as the KD rig: it has the effect of pulling the hook downwards into the bottom lip as the line tightens.

I'm expecting one or two more caracatures from the purists about drunken louts sitting 50 yards from their rod pods, but that would be a straw man if we are really honest with ourselves.

User avatar
Match Aerial
Arctic Char
Posts: 1661
Joined: Fri Dec 19, 2014 7:16 pm
9

Re: How to correctly fish the lift method.

Post by Match Aerial »

A sensitive set up I use for crucian carp in a tiny section of peacock quill set up to take a single no 1 shot. I fish this on a whip at close range ,it works when heavy set ups fail to produce.

MA

User avatar
Snape
Bailiff
Posts: 9982
Joined: Sun Sep 04, 2011 11:52 am
12
Location: North Oxfordshire
Contact:

Re: How to correctly fish the lift method.

Post by Snape »

Chaps, can we keep this thread to how to fish the lift method and not let it drift off into bolt rig territory. Deliberate bolt rigs designed to cause fish to hook themselves is not what we consider to be a traditional fishing technique rather like the hair rig in its modern form.
“Fishing is much more than fish. It is the great occasion when we may return to the fine simplicity of our forefathers,” Herbert Hoover.
`·.¸¸.·´¯`·.¸¸.·´¯`·.¸ ><((((º>

User avatar
Stathamender
Tench
Posts: 2788
Joined: Mon Jun 09, 2014 5:56 pm
9
Location: Sheffield and Nice (France)

Re: How to correctly fish the lift method.

Post by Stathamender »

This has been discussed elsewhere as well. I suspect some of the current participants were involved in that. http://www.purepiscator.com/forum/defau ... osts&t=610. Apparently this was set off by what reads like an Angling Times reprint of some of Walker's articles four years back.

Interesting point made there that the amount of weight the fish feels as it lifts the shot increases the more the float protrudes from the water.

And here's a link to something on the Drennan site about using antennae floats (made by Drennan of course) http://www.drennantackle.com/viewArticle.php?id=17
Iain

What is your favourite word?
I suspect it could be “love”, despite its drawbacks in the rhyming department.
Björn Ulvaeus

User avatar
Mark
Head Bailiff
Posts: 21142
Joined: Mon Aug 22, 2011 4:55 pm
12
Location: Leicestershire
Contact:

Re: How to correctly fish the lift method.

Post by Mark »

Snape wrote:Chaps, can we keep this thread to how to fish the lift method and not let it drift off into bolt rig territory. Deliberate bolt rigs designed to cause fish to hook themselves is not what we consider to be a traditional fishing technique rather like the hair rig in its modern form.
Well said Nigel. :Hat:
Mark (Administrator)

The most precious places in the English landscape are those secretive corners,
where you find only elder trees, nettles and dreams. (BB - Denys Watkins-Pitchford).

Locked

Return to “Lift Method”