Rigs For Livies

[jordan.widz]

G'day Raiders,

Just want to get some info on how to make rigs for fishing with livies for kingfish. Could you please include what knots I should use, line lengths, ect. I want to make a whole lot of them so I'm prepared for the kings this summer. Any advive is welcome.

Cheers, Prawn Star

[jim77]

How do you intend to fish for them?

Anchored, drifting, slow trolling, downrigger? Under a ballon or float?

There are a few different options.

[jordan.widz]

How do you intend to fish for them?

Anchored, drifting, slow trolling, downrigger? Under a ballon or float?

There are a few different options.

Hey mate.

I forgot to mention that. I want rigs that i can use for drifting over inshore reefs, the harbour, pitwater ect and I anchor sometimes too.

[jim77]

You don't need to go to the trouble of pre-tying loads of rigs - realistically they are very simple and shouldn't take you more than a couple of minutes to rig up from scratch. All you have to do is tie a few knots... Plus you might want to change your hook size or style depending on bait size or type and conditions... and if you have pre-tied them all then you can't do that!

If you are at anchor, depending on the depth of the water you just need a ball sinker heavy enough to stop your livey swimming everywhere and tangling all of your other lines. The deeper the water the bigger weight you need. There are a couple of ways to rig it up. You can have a leader of about 1-1.5m and attach a swivel to the end of that. Put the ball sinker above the swivel so the swivel acts as a stopper.

OR you can use a 3 way swivel and tie your weight off the 3rd eye of the swivel on a short length of line(less than ideal method)

OR you can use a snapper lead and attach it to your main line by wrapping rubber bands around the line lots of times and passing the loop back through the snapper lead and over itself.

If you are drifting in deeper water you will want a pretty decent size lead as even with a drogue out if the water is 30m plus deep you will find your line will angle back behind the boat a fair bit if there is any sort of current and you don't have a decent lead holding it down.

A lot of people don't like to have swivels in their rig when fishing for bigger kings as that is another couple of potential weak points where the line might snap, so they just attach the lead with the elastic band method or i was on a charter in NZ and the skipper there just tied a big dropper loop about a metre up from the hook and attached the lead there.

As long as you are confident in it it doesn't matter how you do it.