Dear Carp-Talk,
With reference to Carp-Talk issue 1192 (19-25th September 2017) on pages 108-111 where it says that Mick Kavanagh is the inventor of the Multi rig, I would like to point out that this rig is in fact the bear bones of one myself and Ian Bettoney invented way back in 1998. This is the sliding hook rig which was developed as the earliest version of our later known VCR rig (Variation Combination Rig). We filed for a patent pending in 1999 to protect the sliding part of our rig, including all the variations there of after and before, that could be made this way by either adding or taking away various components. The original twin-plied version, which is actually now called the Multi rig, had float stop rubbers used to keep the twin-plied hooklink together.
The hooklink was doubled over on its self, with the loop pushed through the hook eye and dropped over the bend point of the hook. Unless you were at the 1999 Carp Society show or unless you take notice of patents, then you probably wouldn’t of realized that the sliding hook theory was at that time already known. We took the precaution in 1998 of copyrighting the idea down on paper as proof positive that we in fact had this rig first.
Believe it or not, the idea first started as a joke, when myself and my best mate lan Bettoney were having a bit of a laugh. At the time he set me the challenge of inventing a new kind of rig that the carp would have no chance of getting away with. I’d got a fair knowledge of rigs at that time, so to be different I decided to double over the hooklink to create a loop, then pass it through the eye of the hook and drop it over the bend and point. To keep the twin plied hooklink together, I added a few small float stop rubbers, then stripped some of the Snakeskin back to create a hinge giving the rig 360 degree rotation. I tried it out, and surprisingly it worked really well. The next time Ian came round I showed it to him. Initially he laughed, that is until he tried it and found it worked. He then suggested attaching a rig ring, and then we noticed we could take the hook off and attach a different hook pattern, or a new one if the other had become blunt.
I thought we could carry on with the float stop rubbers, leaving them near the hinge, until I added some soft silicone tubing, then tied on a small two-way swivel. I then pulled the tubing down and seated it half over the swivel to protect the knott. I then moved the float stops back down towards the two-way swivel and tubing, finishing the rig off.
If you look at the diagram from the patent we had granted at the time, and remove the float stop rubbers and two rig rings off the loop, you have the original Multi rig copyrighted in 1998. Later versions of our sliding hook theory became our sliding D rig, like the ones printed in Carp-Talk 428 in 2002 and 464 in 2003. This is when we were known as I & I Carp Lab.
Kindest regards
Ian Hancock
