Now as I said I used to have a million little variations on rigs long ones, short ones, stiff ones braid ones, stripped ones, hinged ones chod ones mono ones fluro ones simply tooooo many. There is nothing worse than looking into a rig wallet and immediately questioning yourself. I have done it myself and have sat there for 10 minutes thinking what will work best so I simply decided to work on a set of rigs that I knew I could use confidently especially on my syndicate. The rigs that I settled on where heavily advertised
ones but for the solid clearish bottoms with a small amout of detritus on them I was fishing over they were going to be winners. I settled on a combi rig for my boilie/ particle approaches and a variation on the stiff hinged rig as an out and out pop up/ choddy(ish) presentation. Now this article isn’t here to teach anyone to suck eggs or indeed make anyone change over to “my” presentations it’s just a few of my observations.
With my combi rigs I just love the way they become infinitely adjustable with different materials and lengths and even down to different hook patterns allowing them to work for a myriad of presentations. With so many anglers looking to almost create a
rig for their situation you can blow your mind, with a few alterations this rig does it all.  Below is just a few of the components that I use
Now it may look like a load of bits but what these components allow me to do is change the way that a bait is presented but always done with 100% confidence. What I love about this is rig is the fact that it is virtually tangle free and also as long as you
use nicely balanced bait it will boom away from the lead creating a straight link meaning the contact with the lead is almost instant as the fish kicks off the spot. Now traditionally and with a good 75% of my combis I use a fluro boom and a braid limp turn and flip section and invariably use a blowback ring so that I know that the bait can reset in the event of an aborted take. However this said I have recently found, thanks to one of my mates on the syndicate, a perfect material allowing me to tie great stiff to supple combis without a knot. Now this eliminates the one issue with combi and that is the knot now the trade-off for this is you lose the invisibility of fluro as what you have is a coated fluro. This material works the same way as a strippable braid just you pull the fluro through the braid sheath allowing you to create loads of different rigs. The best thing I find with this is the ability to strip the core after you have tied the rig by feeding the fluro back out allowing you to increase your supple section in turn raising the rig if used as a pop up mmmmm  sexy.
So as I say the combi offers a ton of options it works well as a pop up rig with a short supple section and a hair leaving mid shank or great as a bottom/ snowman presentation with a hair exiting opposite the barb. You can use a semi stiff coated braid as a boom section if you are fishing over a softer bottom allowing it to settle over and bottom or a chod filament boom over gravel creating a rigid and tangle free set up. Now for me this is a rig that does for 80%ish of my angling with the odd tweak here and there it is a rig that works for you and the results stand for themselves with two of my 2012 biggies falling to this rig.

Now for 100% pop up fishing and fishing over slightly choddier bottoms I pull out the other rig and that’s the stiff hinge variation. Now with this rig I use the same chod curve and a pop up critically balanced to lower the rig over the bottom but what I do is use a coated braid boom allowing it to settle gentler and still allowing it to boom away from the lead. Now as I say I use this for dirtier bottoms but there is no reason that this won’t work anywhere and is a firm fave with a lot of top anglers.

So there we go a simple run down of what is always in my rig wallet and in my eyes two rigs that will work in nearly all situations and are always working in your favour. If, in my eyes, you can go into that wallet andpluck out something that you know works you have won that battle.  With a razor sharp hook and quality bait these ones will do it for you.