The Portland Float Rig

Doesn’t lead just ruin the fight!

Since I took a break from chartering nearly four years ago I have had more time during the summer months and I’m now quite selfish with my angling. I keep a little bit of sea fishing to me, I do a fair stint of my year on rivers coarse fishing and carping and I save all my pennies to escape to overseas whenever the piggy bank gets full. This time spent fishing different waters, for different species and using different types of tackle means I get to compare many types of angling for good and bad.

With coarse fishing you get the chance to target big fish – barbel, carp and pike, up to and over 20lbs, using light tackle because the lead required to combat the current or to hold the bottom in the UK’s freshwater venues is rarely over 3oz. With tropical fishing you get the chance to target huge fish – big tarpon, enormous billfish, huge sharks and numerous other big species, again using light tackle. Often depth plays a big factor. Overseas many big fish can be caught in very shallow water but what makes overseas fishing more light-tackle friendly is that a lot of deepwater species, instead of living on the bottom, frequent the mid and surface layers of the water which again means they can be targeted with less lead and lighter set-ups! With saltwater fishing in the UK our fish grow to reasonable sizes and fight pretty hard too. Tope kick butt and provide an adrenalin fuelled fight! Bream scrap like hell for their size. Big cod and Pollack take searing first runs and Bass fight with royalty. The list of good fighting fish is endless but because of our depths and tides, often these fights can be ruined by one thing – heavy lead!

On a recent trip Bass fishing, I started using 4oz of lead whilst the tide was slack. On a heavy spinning rod the sport was great with fish ranging from 4-7lbs. As the tide picked up, more lead was required to hold the bottom until eventually, through the peak of the tide, I was using an up-tider with 1lb of lead dangling from the tip. Now an up-tider is not suited to using weights of this size and not only was the action of the rod spoilt, the fight from each bass caught thereafter was too.

Unfortunately, for most of our fishing, we are never going to get away from using large leads to hold the bottom as a lot of our species live and/or feed on the sea bed because that is where dinner is. I’d love to be able to give you a new tactic or new piece of tackle to replace the use of lead making your sport more fun, but I can’t – the tackle Alchemists having turned bamboo canes, string and safety pins into the technical rods and reels we see today, still haven’t found a way to get baits to the bottom without using weight and it’s highly unlikely that they will. What I can do is inspire you to look for bass in other places and fish for them a little differently.

Where rays and big bottom feeders are concerned you will always have to use some form of weight to cut tide and hold the bottom but there is another more sporting way to catch other species. Tope, pollack, bass and bream all have one thing in common - not only will they live and feed at depth on the sea-bed, they will also frequent the mid and surface layers of our waters. A lot of people don’t realise this but whilst they’re dragging a sand eel across a sandbank in 60ft of water, there may be bass feeding at 40ft, 20ft and even in the top 10ft of water. Bream, all sharks and pollack are similar too. Here’s how to target them and get better sport with less lead. The rig described is for bass but can easily be adapted for other mid-water feeders by using larger or smaller floats, different traces and different hooks to suit the species you seek.

The Portland float rig is a hybrid of a standard float-fishing rig and a Portland bottom rig and is a rig that can be used to float fish deeper than normal depths (up to 80ft). It’s tangle-free boom system enables you to get long traces and live-baits deeper than when fishing a conventional float. Here’s how to make one...

• 1) Thread your main line down through the largest float you can find, suitable to your species sought. The image shows a Zebco catfish float which is perfect for big bass.
• 2) A bead and a stop knot on the line first will enable you to set the float depth. Also place a bead after the float to buffer the next knot in line.
• 3) To make the Portland rig first tie on a swivel after the float and bead.
• 4) To this last swivel, tie a 30cm length of 30lb clear mono and thread onto this (in order) a bead, a swivel and a bead, finishing the bottom of the rig with a snap-link swivel to hold the lead or weak link if one is needed. Hopefully you will have created a mini-boom with a swivel that can rotate between two beads.
• 5) From this boom (the rotating swivel) you can attach whatever trace length and hook you need to do the job in hand. I use from 3-15ft of 10-15pound fluorocarbon depending on species. For bass hooks I like Owner SSW circles, Varivas BMX or Owner Stinger trebles depending on what live-bait I’m using and how finicky the bass are that I’m trying to catch. Circles work well under the resistance of a big float. Varivas BMX are a tried and tested Wide Mouth favourite and stinger trebles hook shy fish every time! Pick other hooks to suit the species you’re fishing for.
• Do not use trebles for any fish you do not intended to take for the table!

The next time you’re fishing for bass, pollack, bream or tope in shallow water where heavy leads are required and normal float-fishing isn’t possible, put a tangle-free Portland float rig over the side and see what’s down there!