brilliant article on the slider
Posted: January 21st, 2012, 1:08 pm
Last year I spent several days working with Belgian international Pierre Francois Deschipper, who asked whether I had tried slider fishing with bulk shot on an anti-tangle tube, which was featured in an InfoPeche article some months earlier. No, I replied, but said I would make a point of trying it as soon as possible. That was in May 2010. So, true to my word, I tried them shortly after and they worked extremely well. So well in fact, that they sparked a sort of slider re-birth within my own personal fishing style.
Modern slider rigs now take away the age-old hassles of tangles, leaving you with a method that is both simple and fun to fish with. It works on any venue, from 1.50 metres to as deep as you like. Slider fishing is also capable of outscoring the feeder on certain venues, as I will explain later. I also managed to get some of the anglers I fish with in England excited about the slider as well. There are a now a few of us who pick venues where we can spend the day trying out different slider rigs, a sort of a 'slider-club' if you like.
It took a while, but I eventually managed to try out the tube system!So why did it take so long, since I first tried Pierre Francois' sliding tube, until I got round to writing about it in October 2011? Nicolas Beroud will tell you that I had been talking about this type of article for a year or more, but encountered three unforeseen delays:
1.Research. I spent a lot of time looking and searching for new floats and rigs to try out. This proved really exciting because I began to realise that the slider was no longer the simple 'English versus Italian style' contest. As Pierre Francois showed, other countries were developing their own slant on sliders, Michael Schlögl in Germany being a prime example, along with the some of the latest developments from Cralusso... like their new Zero slider attachment.
2.Ordering the right equipment. I've spent a bit of money on slider items over the last year or two, and bought a couple of rods, realising that you need the right rod for the right size of float. Getting hold of floats, such as Rive, Perfects' or Tamas Walters', for English style rigs was easy. Click on any decent UK tackle shop’s website and you are able to buy these between 4SSG and 6SSG, but you can’t pick up a proper Italian style slider for love nor money! So I decided to order the very best and went to Maurizio Schiepatti. He's one of the best float makers in Italy and such is the quality of his work that there is a delay of several months when ordering any quantity. But the wait is worth every second, because they are simply fantastic. The same goes for Michael Schlögl. I had to wait for his new Series 4 Genius sliders to be available and, again, I can tell you that the wait was worth it!
Websites: www.schiepattigalleggianti.it and www.michaelschloegl.de
3.Return to Serre Poncon. Having experienced delays in the spring of 2011, I made the decision to wait until my summer holidays and test my nearly acquired floats at Serre Poncon, in South-east France. This is a huge reservoir, over 23km long and at least a kilometre wide, with thermal winds every day which are guaranteed to test the stability of any slider rig. I believe there is no better, or more scenic, venue for this sort of fishing!
As well as putting together all the tackle required for testing, I called on the expertise of some great anglers to put me on the right track, with rigs and ideas:
Stuart Conroy. Drennan sponsored Team England stalwart, who travels on all team England trips with Alan Scotthorne, someone he reckons is the best slider angler in the world!
Milo Colombo. When I needed help in understanding Italian rigs and set ups, I went to the 'maestro' for help and inspiration
Pierre Francois 'Skippy' Deschipper. Is the angler who got me fishing the slider again regularly, a great thinking angler 'Skippy' has improved and refined his slider fishing further since we spoke in 2010.
Michael Schlögl. This German international has proved to be a source of inspiration, both in terms of the quality and the truly selective diversity of the tackle he is producing. Michael is not bound by any set of rules, when it comes to slider fishing, and has floats and rigs that simply cut across many established conventions. For example, his fantastic Italian style sliders that have a loading like an improved Hungarian Cralusso Rocket. You certainly need to think outside the box to come up with these ideas!
Schlögl’s idea of mixing up what is seen as conventional slider wisdom, is one of the key themes of this article. For instance, what happens when you fish an English style waggler with an Italian style rig? Or try a Hungarian Cralusso float with the Belgian inspired anti-tangle tube? But before I start looking into sort of international slider 'stew-pot', we need to be clear with what the base ingredients are. So let’s start by looking at what each nation brings into the kitchen, country by country.
ENGLAND
The modern slider float, or sliding waggler to be specific, is an English invention. The 1975 World Championships, held on a canal in Poland, saw Ian Heaps win the individual crown with a couple of carp caught on this method. This brought international attention to the method and since then, ironically, gained popularity and strength on the continent, whilst in the UK it declined due to the rise of feeder fishing in most competitions.
The English slider method has undergone a change since that initial victory, when Ian used a No.4 shot above the bulk to sit the float on. This had proved to be the source of countless tangles and much frustration, but today things are quite different! So let’s take a look at the latest set-up of English slider rigs with Stuart Conroy:
It's a tried and tested set-up that Drennan Team England have implemented and used for over decade. The rig itself is so simple; being as comfortable at catching bream at 45 metres, as catching roach and skimmers at 17 metres.
Mainline should be a minimum of 0.20mm, as this will eliminate tangles with a facing wind.
Floats should only be semi-loaded sliders, with at least 20% of the capacity of the waggler e.g. a 10 gram float would have 8 grams down the line and 2 grams loaded in the float body. This keeps the float on the bulk shot when casting.
Floats such as the Rive Scotthorne patterns, with brass inserts are ideal and should be connected to the mainline via a Drennan float adaptor. This adaptor is very important because the swivel is squashed slightly, creating an oval which helps the float and adaptor trap on the sliding stop knot.
The bulk shot should be positioned approximately just over a metre (4ft is Stu's recommendation, or about 1.20m) from the hook. Never use more than four large bulk shot as any more can contribute to tangles. A couple of trimming shot is okay but make sure all the splits in the shot are placed in a line for neatness and, under no circumstances, you should not leave any gaps between the shots.
Dropper shots, keep it simple. Position a No.4 shot 30cm below the bulk, a No.6 shot 30cm below that, then a No.8 swivel 30cm below that, to which a hooklength of approximately 30cm is attached. The swivel is used to eliminate spin on the retrieve. Hooks and hooklength breaking strain should be suited to your intended quarry. Sometimes dropper shot sizes need to be increased if lift bites are likely to be encountered. Make sure they are increased in their respective sizes, again to prevent tangles.
Lastly, the all-important slider stop knot completes the set up. Try to prevent the use of beads and other unnecessary objects on your line. They are NOT NECESSARY, according to Stuart.
STOP KNOTS:
Stuart's stop knot
Take around 6inch (15cm) of 0.25mm line and place it alongside your 0.20mm mainline, then form a loop. Pass one end of the 0.25mm line through the loop and around the main line. Repeat this five or six times, moisten then pull tight. Trim the ends back to around 3cm. This will help the line pass through the rod rings. The knot can now be adjusted to the required depth. You will realise that Stu passes the line through the loop on each turn, which is unlike the classic whipping knot, where the line is simply wrapped round the main line rather than through the loop each time.
Pierre Francois' stop knot
Pierre Francois has a different approach. He uses a lighter line than Stuart, such as a 0.14mm or 0.16mm, but then doubles the line over before tying the knot. This is actually quite easy to do. Take a length of nylon about 30cm long and double it over. Then about half way along the doubled section you form a loop. Simply wind the doubled tag ends around both the loop and the main line five times then back through the doubled loop once. Pull the knot tight and there you have it, a doubled slider knot. By using slightly finer diameter nylons the knot catches on the rings less and seems to bite into thicker reel line better, moving less. I've tried using a doubled slider knots with a thicker line, but it seems to make the knot slide more easily!
The Italian way!
One of the latest stop knot trends to come out of Italy is that of using marker braid, rather than mono line. This is a strong braid of between 10 and 15lb, which the carp boys use specifically on their marker/spod rods. The braid is capable of biting the reel line very tightly and has the added advantage over nylon of being bright green or yellow and thereby easy to spot!
Specific tackle
Rods: Stuart is a fan of 14ft rods but these don’t have to be 'beefed-up' to cast English slider floats. He uses and recommends Drennan Match Pro Ultra-light rods for all his slider work. (On a personal note, I have been using the slightly heavier Drennan Match Pro 14ft rod for my general slider fishing and this, I feel, gives a little more flexibility to go up to a 14 or 16 gram floats than the Ultra-light might, but both rods are fantastic tools for slider fishing). The key thing with any slider rod is that it has a clean tip action, so you can punch floats out, then pick up line cleanly when striking. There are lots of softer big fish waggler rods available, in 14ft lengths, but they don’t have that same crisp clean tip action that the Drennan classic rods do.
Floats: Stuart mentioned that an English waggler float should have no more than 20% of its load in the base with the rest bulked down the line. Some lead is needed in the base of the float so that the float stays alongside the bulk whilst being cast. There has been a lot of improvement in wagglers for English slider fishing over the last 5 years. For most fishing of his slider work, Stu tends to use floats of between 4 and 6SSG (one SSG = 1.8 grams, so you can do the maths).
The Hungarian Perfect models have a great range that have been used by everyone from myself to Will Raison! Then came the Tamas Walter floats, which used slightly longer white peacock stems. These have long been a favourite of many international anglers, not just for their rigidity in the heat, but for acting like a huge white traffic light when lift bites occur in sunny weather.
The latest quality floats available come from Rive. Both the Alan Scotthorne range, favoured by Stu from 4 to 6 SSG, and the Rive W24 floats, which allow up to 15 grams down the line! Didier Delannoy hadn't spent all that time with Alan Scotthorne not to understand what a good slider float should look like!
Finally, I must mention the Series 3 Michael Schlögl slider floats, which are based on classic English wagglers that go up to 20 grams down the line! I will be devoting a whole section to what Michael has come up with, in terms of float design, later in this article. These floats open up possibilities for getting a lot of lead down fast, in deeper waters, or anchoring floats in big drifts, that were previously impossible.
Float adaptor with flattened eye
You may have been aware that the floats I have already mentioned are all fitted with a simple brass rod for loading. I have not mentioned any of the many floats available from Sensas, Colmic, Browning etc,. with brass loading rings that can be set so they take approximately 20% of the load in the base of the float and the rest down the line. The reason is simple as I'm describing the classic English slider set up and on this, a float adaptor is used with a flattened eye to catch the stop knot. These float adaptors have several advantages:
They allow you to change floats over when fishing, from say a bristled to a solid tipped model.
Rigs can be made-up and stored more easily, as you only need a small winder for the float adaptor and the bulk shot to sit on. All your floats can travel safely in a float tube!
The swivel can easily be pinched on an adaptor to create that flattened oval shape that catches the stop knots so perfectly. On floats with built in rings and weight systems, I think you are better using beads and leaving the eyes alone, as they are not as thick or as strong as the swivels used in the adaptors.
The float adaptor itself is worthy of some mention. Stuart uses the Drennan adaptors and these are great, so long as you can get the brass rod right into the adaptor, otherwise the float has a tendency to flop over the leads. Michael Schlögl has developed some thicker and stiffer walled silicones, specifically for this style of slider fishing. They are perfect, because the thicker silicone helps to make the link to the float more rigid as well as being that little bit stronger and able to cope, when it comes to punching out the heavier slider floats.
Modern slider rigs now take away the age-old hassles of tangles, leaving you with a method that is both simple and fun to fish with. It works on any venue, from 1.50 metres to as deep as you like. Slider fishing is also capable of outscoring the feeder on certain venues, as I will explain later. I also managed to get some of the anglers I fish with in England excited about the slider as well. There are a now a few of us who pick venues where we can spend the day trying out different slider rigs, a sort of a 'slider-club' if you like.
It took a while, but I eventually managed to try out the tube system!So why did it take so long, since I first tried Pierre Francois' sliding tube, until I got round to writing about it in October 2011? Nicolas Beroud will tell you that I had been talking about this type of article for a year or more, but encountered three unforeseen delays:
1.Research. I spent a lot of time looking and searching for new floats and rigs to try out. This proved really exciting because I began to realise that the slider was no longer the simple 'English versus Italian style' contest. As Pierre Francois showed, other countries were developing their own slant on sliders, Michael Schlögl in Germany being a prime example, along with the some of the latest developments from Cralusso... like their new Zero slider attachment.
2.Ordering the right equipment. I've spent a bit of money on slider items over the last year or two, and bought a couple of rods, realising that you need the right rod for the right size of float. Getting hold of floats, such as Rive, Perfects' or Tamas Walters', for English style rigs was easy. Click on any decent UK tackle shop’s website and you are able to buy these between 4SSG and 6SSG, but you can’t pick up a proper Italian style slider for love nor money! So I decided to order the very best and went to Maurizio Schiepatti. He's one of the best float makers in Italy and such is the quality of his work that there is a delay of several months when ordering any quantity. But the wait is worth every second, because they are simply fantastic. The same goes for Michael Schlögl. I had to wait for his new Series 4 Genius sliders to be available and, again, I can tell you that the wait was worth it!
Websites: www.schiepattigalleggianti.it and www.michaelschloegl.de
3.Return to Serre Poncon. Having experienced delays in the spring of 2011, I made the decision to wait until my summer holidays and test my nearly acquired floats at Serre Poncon, in South-east France. This is a huge reservoir, over 23km long and at least a kilometre wide, with thermal winds every day which are guaranteed to test the stability of any slider rig. I believe there is no better, or more scenic, venue for this sort of fishing!
As well as putting together all the tackle required for testing, I called on the expertise of some great anglers to put me on the right track, with rigs and ideas:
Stuart Conroy. Drennan sponsored Team England stalwart, who travels on all team England trips with Alan Scotthorne, someone he reckons is the best slider angler in the world!
Milo Colombo. When I needed help in understanding Italian rigs and set ups, I went to the 'maestro' for help and inspiration
Pierre Francois 'Skippy' Deschipper. Is the angler who got me fishing the slider again regularly, a great thinking angler 'Skippy' has improved and refined his slider fishing further since we spoke in 2010.
Michael Schlögl. This German international has proved to be a source of inspiration, both in terms of the quality and the truly selective diversity of the tackle he is producing. Michael is not bound by any set of rules, when it comes to slider fishing, and has floats and rigs that simply cut across many established conventions. For example, his fantastic Italian style sliders that have a loading like an improved Hungarian Cralusso Rocket. You certainly need to think outside the box to come up with these ideas!
Schlögl’s idea of mixing up what is seen as conventional slider wisdom, is one of the key themes of this article. For instance, what happens when you fish an English style waggler with an Italian style rig? Or try a Hungarian Cralusso float with the Belgian inspired anti-tangle tube? But before I start looking into sort of international slider 'stew-pot', we need to be clear with what the base ingredients are. So let’s start by looking at what each nation brings into the kitchen, country by country.
ENGLAND
The modern slider float, or sliding waggler to be specific, is an English invention. The 1975 World Championships, held on a canal in Poland, saw Ian Heaps win the individual crown with a couple of carp caught on this method. This brought international attention to the method and since then, ironically, gained popularity and strength on the continent, whilst in the UK it declined due to the rise of feeder fishing in most competitions.
The English slider method has undergone a change since that initial victory, when Ian used a No.4 shot above the bulk to sit the float on. This had proved to be the source of countless tangles and much frustration, but today things are quite different! So let’s take a look at the latest set-up of English slider rigs with Stuart Conroy:
It's a tried and tested set-up that Drennan Team England have implemented and used for over decade. The rig itself is so simple; being as comfortable at catching bream at 45 metres, as catching roach and skimmers at 17 metres.
Mainline should be a minimum of 0.20mm, as this will eliminate tangles with a facing wind.
Floats should only be semi-loaded sliders, with at least 20% of the capacity of the waggler e.g. a 10 gram float would have 8 grams down the line and 2 grams loaded in the float body. This keeps the float on the bulk shot when casting.
Floats such as the Rive Scotthorne patterns, with brass inserts are ideal and should be connected to the mainline via a Drennan float adaptor. This adaptor is very important because the swivel is squashed slightly, creating an oval which helps the float and adaptor trap on the sliding stop knot.
The bulk shot should be positioned approximately just over a metre (4ft is Stu's recommendation, or about 1.20m) from the hook. Never use more than four large bulk shot as any more can contribute to tangles. A couple of trimming shot is okay but make sure all the splits in the shot are placed in a line for neatness and, under no circumstances, you should not leave any gaps between the shots.
Dropper shots, keep it simple. Position a No.4 shot 30cm below the bulk, a No.6 shot 30cm below that, then a No.8 swivel 30cm below that, to which a hooklength of approximately 30cm is attached. The swivel is used to eliminate spin on the retrieve. Hooks and hooklength breaking strain should be suited to your intended quarry. Sometimes dropper shot sizes need to be increased if lift bites are likely to be encountered. Make sure they are increased in their respective sizes, again to prevent tangles.
Lastly, the all-important slider stop knot completes the set up. Try to prevent the use of beads and other unnecessary objects on your line. They are NOT NECESSARY, according to Stuart.
STOP KNOTS:
Stuart's stop knot
Take around 6inch (15cm) of 0.25mm line and place it alongside your 0.20mm mainline, then form a loop. Pass one end of the 0.25mm line through the loop and around the main line. Repeat this five or six times, moisten then pull tight. Trim the ends back to around 3cm. This will help the line pass through the rod rings. The knot can now be adjusted to the required depth. You will realise that Stu passes the line through the loop on each turn, which is unlike the classic whipping knot, where the line is simply wrapped round the main line rather than through the loop each time.
Pierre Francois' stop knot
Pierre Francois has a different approach. He uses a lighter line than Stuart, such as a 0.14mm or 0.16mm, but then doubles the line over before tying the knot. This is actually quite easy to do. Take a length of nylon about 30cm long and double it over. Then about half way along the doubled section you form a loop. Simply wind the doubled tag ends around both the loop and the main line five times then back through the doubled loop once. Pull the knot tight and there you have it, a doubled slider knot. By using slightly finer diameter nylons the knot catches on the rings less and seems to bite into thicker reel line better, moving less. I've tried using a doubled slider knots with a thicker line, but it seems to make the knot slide more easily!
The Italian way!
One of the latest stop knot trends to come out of Italy is that of using marker braid, rather than mono line. This is a strong braid of between 10 and 15lb, which the carp boys use specifically on their marker/spod rods. The braid is capable of biting the reel line very tightly and has the added advantage over nylon of being bright green or yellow and thereby easy to spot!
Specific tackle
Rods: Stuart is a fan of 14ft rods but these don’t have to be 'beefed-up' to cast English slider floats. He uses and recommends Drennan Match Pro Ultra-light rods for all his slider work. (On a personal note, I have been using the slightly heavier Drennan Match Pro 14ft rod for my general slider fishing and this, I feel, gives a little more flexibility to go up to a 14 or 16 gram floats than the Ultra-light might, but both rods are fantastic tools for slider fishing). The key thing with any slider rod is that it has a clean tip action, so you can punch floats out, then pick up line cleanly when striking. There are lots of softer big fish waggler rods available, in 14ft lengths, but they don’t have that same crisp clean tip action that the Drennan classic rods do.
Floats: Stuart mentioned that an English waggler float should have no more than 20% of its load in the base with the rest bulked down the line. Some lead is needed in the base of the float so that the float stays alongside the bulk whilst being cast. There has been a lot of improvement in wagglers for English slider fishing over the last 5 years. For most fishing of his slider work, Stu tends to use floats of between 4 and 6SSG (one SSG = 1.8 grams, so you can do the maths).
The Hungarian Perfect models have a great range that have been used by everyone from myself to Will Raison! Then came the Tamas Walter floats, which used slightly longer white peacock stems. These have long been a favourite of many international anglers, not just for their rigidity in the heat, but for acting like a huge white traffic light when lift bites occur in sunny weather.
The latest quality floats available come from Rive. Both the Alan Scotthorne range, favoured by Stu from 4 to 6 SSG, and the Rive W24 floats, which allow up to 15 grams down the line! Didier Delannoy hadn't spent all that time with Alan Scotthorne not to understand what a good slider float should look like!
Finally, I must mention the Series 3 Michael Schlögl slider floats, which are based on classic English wagglers that go up to 20 grams down the line! I will be devoting a whole section to what Michael has come up with, in terms of float design, later in this article. These floats open up possibilities for getting a lot of lead down fast, in deeper waters, or anchoring floats in big drifts, that were previously impossible.
Float adaptor with flattened eye
You may have been aware that the floats I have already mentioned are all fitted with a simple brass rod for loading. I have not mentioned any of the many floats available from Sensas, Colmic, Browning etc,. with brass loading rings that can be set so they take approximately 20% of the load in the base of the float and the rest down the line. The reason is simple as I'm describing the classic English slider set up and on this, a float adaptor is used with a flattened eye to catch the stop knot. These float adaptors have several advantages:
They allow you to change floats over when fishing, from say a bristled to a solid tipped model.
Rigs can be made-up and stored more easily, as you only need a small winder for the float adaptor and the bulk shot to sit on. All your floats can travel safely in a float tube!
The swivel can easily be pinched on an adaptor to create that flattened oval shape that catches the stop knots so perfectly. On floats with built in rings and weight systems, I think you are better using beads and leaving the eyes alone, as they are not as thick or as strong as the swivels used in the adaptors.
The float adaptor itself is worthy of some mention. Stuart uses the Drennan adaptors and these are great, so long as you can get the brass rod right into the adaptor, otherwise the float has a tendency to flop over the leads. Michael Schlögl has developed some thicker and stiffer walled silicones, specifically for this style of slider fishing. They are perfect, because the thicker silicone helps to make the link to the float more rigid as well as being that little bit stronger and able to cope, when it comes to punching out the heavier slider floats.