Tying a D-rig step by step — a boilie rig for carp

The channel's favourite boilie hooklink, tied from scratch. It had appeared in an earlier session video shot at Tribalj, but little of it was actually visible there.

What you need: 40 lb fluorocarbon (Korda IQ2 here), a size 4 wide gape hook (Gardner Covert Dark, which holds its point even on a quarry lake), a micro ring swivel, a 2–3 mm piece of anti-tangle tubing, an anti-tangle rubber sleeve, plus scissors, a lighter and a puller.

The line goes through the eye from the hook point side, front to back, so it ends up behind the shank. The rubber goes on the tag, then the hook point is eased through it alongside the line without nicking it.

The tubing has to be anti-tangle rather than silicone — silicone would not take the load. Leave about two centimetres to form the D, tie a knotless knot with seven turns, then pass the line back through the eye from behind, wet it and pull it home.

Two details the video stresses: fit the rubber sleeve before tying the end loop, and keep that loop small. A small loop puts the figure-of-eight knot on the thicker part of the sleeve; a long one lets it slide down to the tapering end, where it will not seat and can tear the anti-tangle sleeve.

Hooklink length is 13 cm from the eye, folded in half. The free tag goes into the larger eye of the micro swivel, folds back and passes through the hook eye from behind. Set the D slightly tighter than you want it, trim the tag to half a centimetre and melt a small blob on it with a storm lighter — that is what keeps the D from pulling out.

Hook size caps the line diameter. A size 4 works with 40 lb and perhaps 47; on a size 6 you could not pass 47 through twice. On distance, a viewer reported it failing at 130 m — here it was fished to 110 m with a 20 mm boilie and held. Beyond that, or with a longer-shank hook, the classic D-rig with the hook also tied at the front is the recommendation; it is simply hard to tie in fluorocarbon.