Is it ok to make and use your own rigs and is there anything recommended to bring?

Question:

Hi Stuart,

It's Bob here from sunny England. The lads and I are really excited about our upcoming trip, and we wanted to ask you if it is ok for us to make and use our own rigs, and is there anything you recommend we bring? Also can we use our own reels loaded with braid? Finally, bait – again can we bring our own and any pointers to give us the edge?

Regards, Bob.

Stuart's answer:

Hi Bob,

Glad to hear you and the boys are looking forward to the trip. We are all looking forward to meeting you and hopefully getting you amongst some monsters. Sure, we welcome you bringing your own bits and making your own rigs. Sometimes people like you show us some new and better kit, and also it saves our precious stocks. We recommend 45lb minimum hooklinks for maize and boilies etc, and 80lb minimum for fish and squid baits. The hooklinks we use and recommend are Kryston Quicksilver for maize etc, Kryston Ton-Up for fish baits etc. By bringing your own you can play around with the lengths of your rigs, whereas using ours you get the length we use to minimize waste, as tackle is precious over here. Fox Large Bolt Bubbles will definitely give you an edge for arapaima. If you have a favourite hook pattern that is strong and sharp by all means bring them, but you must crush the barbs. All rigs and materials must be approved by us prior to casting out. As for braid, by all means use it, but we don't load our reels with it, as for inexperienced anglers it is not good, due to having no stretch should a mistake be made. We will not allow under 80lb bs. As with the line you MUST use a rubbing strip for protecting our fish – at least a minimum of 30ins of plastic tubing. Line... there is only one worth using in our opinion, and that is Gold label Pro-Tough in 35lb bs. Bait, and again it's a yes, and it will give you an edge as we do not always have a supply here due to waiting for supplies to arrive, Richworth dumbbell pop-ups and Richworth pop-up mix are tops here, Solar pop-ups work well too, as do C C Moore pop-ups. We can't rate the Richworth pop-up mix highly enough for making king size baits. Fruit, creams, fish flavours and soaks work well, and will certainly give you an advantage as we do not supply these unless some kind soul has left some. We do not allow any outside fish baits to be bought in – all these must be our own for the fishes' welfare.

Hope that answers your questions. Any more, feel free to ask.

To anyone else planning a trip, take note of the above products especially, Kryston Ton-Up hooklink, Owner hooks size 4/0 model 5111-141 style SSW, 75mm sinking tube (the ESP brand is good), and Fox Large Bolt Bubbles are very effective. We will show you a blinding arapaima rig using these products. For the Siamese carp bring Solar Stronghold longshank hooks size 1 or Fox Armapoint SSSP size 1. For hooklinks you cant beat Kryston Quicksilver.

Best regards, Stuart and the team.