My top tip for this week is shotting rigs correctly. When approaching most modern day commericals, one of the biggest questions I have to ask myself is which bait is going to be best; maggots or pellets. But it's not quite as simple as that, you have to shot your rig correctly depending on what bait is going to be best, I'm going to show you exactly how I do it.

This is my standard maggot and pellet rig, starting at the very bottom; the maggot rig has a lot smaller hook than the pellet rig, a standard size 20 and a standard size 16. I feel with a pellet you can use a bigger hook, because you can disguise it into the bait. The length of the hooklength changes; with maggots I like to use a 6" hooklength, with pellets I like to use a 5" hooklength. I feel with pellets, a shorter hooklength is better, you just see a few more bites. The actual material of the hooklength changes as well, with the maggots I like to use just standard mono and with the pellets I like to use fluorocarbon. I feel the fluorocarbon is just a bit heavier and stiffer for the pellets being more direct.

The shotting pattern is probably the biggest thing for me though, with my pellets I like to shot my shot with an inch gap in between each one. With the maggot rig I like to shot it with a 3" gap between each of the shot. I feel like with pellets, everything sinks very vertically, with maggots everything drifts about a bit more, so with a maggot rig I like to feel like everything is falling a bit slower and a bit more strung out. With pellets I like to fish very directly, I drop my rig in very vertical, i like to get everything to reset as quick as possible.

The float itself, in general with maggots I fish with smaller floats, say my peg today was 4ft deep I'd use a 0.2g for my maggots and a 0.4g for pellets. They vary massively, so most commercials when you're thinking about what bait to fish, if you're not sure set both rigs up and change during the match.

I've been using both of these rigs to great success at my local commercial lake, Acorn lakes, catching great bags of big carp.