What is a Ronnie rig and how to use it

The spinner rig, also known as a Ronnie rig, has quickly become one of the most used presentations in carp fishing and is a favourite of many of the Team Korda anglers, who have used it to catch countless big carp both at home and abroad.

Its rise to popularity should come as no great surprise, as not only is it a very versatile rig in terms of the situations that it can be used in, but is also pretty much tangle-free, and it is extremely easy and quick to change the hook should it become blunt – especially now that all the components to construct it are commercially available and Korda make everything you will need to tie one. 

What is a spinner rig/Ronnie rig?

A spinner rig or Ronnie rig is basically some sort of boom – originally this was a stiff material but there are now all sorts of versions of it – attached to a special type of swivel that allows the hook to be threaded on and off of it as needed, and then held in place with a rubber Kicker. Thus making it incredibly quick to change the hook when it becomes blunt.

This swivel also allows the hook to spin and take hold in the mouth of a carp almost instantly when it picks up the bait, and is one of the main reasons why the rig is so effective at catching carp.

Additional movement is usually added as well to allow the hook to not only ‘swivel’ round, but also to pivot and set itself at the optimum angle, and this is achieved either by using a special Spinner Ring Swivel that incorporates a solid metal ring as well, or by attaching a standard Spinner Swivel via some sort of loop.

This is the rig which also really popularised the use of crimping in carp fishing, to the extent that with any stiff material, a lot of anglers now favour that over knotting it. Each end of the boom can quickly and easily be crimped – using our Korda Krimps and special Korda Krimp Tool – to form a small, neat loop where it attaches to the spinner swivel, and the same at the other end, either directly onto a swivel or just a loop which can then be attached to a quick-change swivel (the easiest and most versatile way of doing it), making it quick and easy to change the boom when desired.

Booms can easily be made up in advance – in different lengths for different situations – and stored in a RigSafe, then when need all you need to do is add a hook and kicker at one end, and attach it to a QC Swivel at the other, making it compatible with any lead set-up.

The use of a Dark Matter Anti Tangle Sleeve keeps it in place on the QC Swivel, and also to help prevent tangles and to kick the rig out away from your line when it lands on the bottom – this is something which made a big difference to the number of pick-ups by carp when we filmed Underwater at Norton Disney, compared to a rig that ended up lying back against the line, leader, or tubing.  

Re-sets and is tangle-free

Aside from it being extremely effective at hooking carp when they pick the hookbait up, there are some other very good reasons for using a spinner/Ronnie rig.

One of the biggest doubts that anglers have in fishing, and especially so with some of the rigs we used in the past – for any older anglers that remember casting out long braided hook links for instance – is the doubt that it could have tangled on the cast and is now laying in a tangled mess on the lake bed with no chance of being picked up by a carp. That is especially so in situations where you are leaving the rig out for longer periods of time – there is nothing worse than winding in 24 hours later to discover that your rig hasn’t even been fishing.

The spinner rig hardly ever tangles, especially when using it with a stiff material such as Korda Boom and in conjunction with an anti-tangle sleeve, so you pretty much know that it is always fishing and you can just cast it out without the need to add PVA bags, dissolving foam, stringers, or the like to try and prevent tangles.

Another big advantage, especially when using a stiff boom and sleeve with it, is that if it does get picked up with a carp and spat out again – as happens pretty often, even with the most effective rigs – it will usually reset itself and is still fishing effectively and gives you just as much chance of a hook up with the next carp that takes it. Unlike some rigs, which once picked up and dropped, tend not to reset themselves and therefore aren’t fishing very efficiently.

When should I use a spinner rig?

Whilst the original spinner/Ronnie rigs, which some anglers made themselves before components for them were commercially available, were mainly used as a pop-up presentation, anglers quickly realised that this rig was also very effective with wafters, and even bottom baits, as the hook turns so aggressively and with the minimum of movement required to do so.

These original set-ups of the spinner/Ronnie were a lot less versatile than the ones today, often with the hook eye being tied to a swivel and then covered in shrink tube, so it didn't have the quick-change properties (due to the shrink tubing rather than a Kicker which can be taken on and off) that have made this rig so popular today.

Typically it works best with a larger size of hook – a size 4 is very popular – and a smaller hookbait, especially so when fishing it with pop-ups and wafters, and whilst these set-ups might look unbalanced and unsubtle, they are incredibly efficient at hooking fish.

The hookbait is normally attached with some sort of Micro Ring Swivel, sliding freely along the shank of the hook and with a Hook Bead positioned somewhere opposite the barb.

But with bottom baits or less buoyant wafters (those where just a small amount of buoyancy has been added), especially in larger sizes, the addition of a braided hair, whipped onto the shank opposite the barb, can be very effective as well and has become a favourite with some anglers.

Hooks with a hair already tied onto them can be tied up in advance and stored in a Korda Hook Safe, to make it very quick to change the hook when needed.

It isn’t just effective with boilies either, and can be fished with tiger nuts (drilled out to make them slightly buoyant works well), plastic baits such as corn, or even stacks of small baits such as rubber casters, or real maggots, on top of a piece of foam.

It can be used on pretty much any type of bottom and with any lead set-up, with a few tweaks sometimes needed so that it sits correctly.

What is the best hook pattern to use with a spinner rig?

If you asked a load of the top anglers which type of hook is best used with a spinner rig or Ronnie rig, you will get a load of different answers!

A lot of it comes down to personal preference and what you are happiest using, as well as considering the type of water you will be using it on – whilst a straight point hook has a higher chance of hooking a fish in the first place, it is also more likely to come out during the fight, as compared to a beaked point, and is worth considering if fishing weedy venues.

Although even then, some anglers will swear by a straight pointed pattern, such as the Korda Krank, even in thick weed.

The reality is that it can be used with pretty much any pattern, but some sort of in-turn to the eye does seem to help make it turn better, and also to sit nicely.

So whether you use a Korda Krank, Spinner, Wide Gape, Klor, Kurv, Longshank X or Longshank Beaked, they will all work, just pick your favourite but if you do suffer from hook pulls then consider trying a different pattern to see if that alleviates them.

Are there other variations of the spinner/Ronnie rig?

There are all sorts of variations of the spinner rig or Ronnie rig that anglers are using now, and have come about via anglers trying different things to the standard version – which typically has a boom of around 5.5 inches, and with the hook bait attached via a micro ring swivel.

The length of the boom section can make a big difference in some situations and is well worth playing around with if you are getting funny hook holds – as you can see Danny Fairbrass doing on the Underwater filming that has been done with this rig.

Some anglers have adapted it by using a less stiff boom material, and in some cases also one that is far longer than with the standard rig.

Coasted braid is a particularly popular choice for that – including the Korda Hybrid which can be crimped, or something like N-Trap or Dark Matter coated braid that is tied in the conventional way to a spinner ring swivel at one end and with a figure-of-eight loop at the other end.

There are also all sorts of variations when it comes to how the hookbait is attached to the hook, and these include hairs that are whipped on or some sort of D-rig presentation, such as that which is achieved with the Korda D-rig Kickers.

One of the most recent variations, and one which has become incredibly popular and has proved to be very effective, is the shot-on-the-hook – which is basically a shot that is attached round near the barb to make the hook point heavier and therefore help it to take hold in the mouth of the carp even more quickly, and which works very well with the mechanics of a spinner rig.

The effectiveness of the shot-on-the-hook can be seen during the filming of Underwater, at Norton Disney, and it totally changed things not only for Danny Fairbrass, who added it to his rig on the film, but also others who saw what a difference it made to the hook up ratio when a carp took the bait.

There really are no set rules with this rig in terms with how it can be used, and there are now so many different variations of it.

Ready tied versions available

If you don’t have the confidence to crimp/tie your own spinner rigs, or just want to try one for the first time and don’t want to go out and buy all the components needed to construct one, then there are ready tied versions available within the Korda range.

For those who want a bit of versatility to set the rig up how they like, but don’t want to tie the booms or set up the hooks with all the components on them – especially useful for those who might have dexterity issues with their fingers – then Korda Booms Spinner Swivel XX pre-tied booms, in 5.5in. or 7.5in. lengths are available, with three in each packet, and all you need to do is attach the hook and whatever set-up you’ve chosen to mount the hookbait on.

Korda Spinner Hook Sections are also available, which include three hooks already set up and attached to a spinner ring swivel, so all you need to do is crimp or tie it to your boom – the use of a ring swivel means that you don’t necessarily need to form an additional loop to give the rig the movement that it needs. The hooks can still be changed if they become blunt, and spare Hook Beads are included.

If you want something that you can just attach to your chosen lead system, put on a hookbait, and cast out, then there are Korda Spinner Rig ready-tied rigs that come in a choice of Krank or Kurv hook patterns.