Rigging

The Rig Effect

Published: 4 November 2011
Written by Bait Bro
4 Comments
Categories: 2011 Tournament Fishing, Big Hammer, Huddleston Deluxe, Rigging, Spinnerbaits, The Alabama Rig
alabama rig kentucky lake
"John Brown". The Catalyst of the War. War on closed minded approaches to rigs and rigging. The Alabama Rig, "Old Blue", simple, made from quality components and solid terminal tackle just helped us all catch a lot more fish.

I’m sitting in Calvert City, waiting for Jet-A-Marina to give me a call, to let me know my lower unit has been delivered, and then installed.  Thanking Yamaha for standing by their warranty, and their support. Of course, I’d like’d to have seen the Yamaha Service crew at the Everstart Event, but that is business and fishing.   So no fishing for me since the tournament, just making hard and from the hip decisions everywhere.

I’m not going to give my $.02 on the Alabama Rig, yet.  I haven’t had a chance to really fish it hard and carefree, swimbait style,  and do everything I want to do.  So, I wanted to share some things that were in direct relation to the Rig.   As things were unfolding with Paul Elias at G-Land, I was making modifications to my presentations to be more ‘multirig’ or ‘polyrig’ in style.  You couldn’t just go get a ‘rig’ to go fish.  It was crazy hearing all this and not even being able to see one or hold one to fabricate your own from, so we just made do.   The fish are on a shad bite, they hunt in small wolf packs in places, and small bait balls that have broken away from the main bait ball are a damn sure good way to get the fish fired up and focused.

quad blade spinnerbait
Quad Bladed Spinnerbaits started catching fish as we scrambled to do anything to start casting baits that made balls of bait, not just one or two baits. I believe we'll be seeing spinnerbaits with many more blades and setups as a result of the Rig Effect

The Booyah Quad Blade Spinnerbait…Someone riddle me this:  Why is there only one spinnerbait with a quad (bonzer!) blade setup (generally available kind)? And it only weighs 3/8 oz?  Why not a 6 blade?  Think about the implications of multirigs and using teasers and creating schools and predator>prey setups that is about to explode.  I have so many ideas and thoughts lately about the Rig Effect it’s hard for me to organize them or even share them in some cases, because the fish catching and money making implications are profound.   Every lure company in North America should have had an ‘all hands’ meeting with the team to strategize about multirigs.

Not only is there going to be a huge amount of rigs created (make your own rig, seriously, its not very difficult to do), there is a viral effect of ideas and innovations that rivals Facebook! (well, probably not).  The Alabama Rig just points out our closed minded approach to rigging as a bass fishermen.   Teasers and umbrellas have been around since the beginning of time.   I’m just excited it catches fish so well.  I can understand throwing 100 lures at once, you expect to hook something, but 5 baits isn’t some disgusting overkill.  I mean we are catching one maybe two fish at a time at best.  You could get 5 sure, but its about presentation and creating the school.

Grass Minnow Double Rig
I started catching 'busting fish' in the back of pockets on the Grass Minnow Double Rig...Tie on one Grass Minnow with a Palomor Knot, leave a long tag end, thread the line back thru the nose of the Grass Minnow like a drop shot rig, come down thru and then tie on Grass Minnow #2 with a Palomar. The Double Grass Minnow has got good weight, but is still a tough Rig at times to fish if its super windy and rough, which it was during the tournament.

10 vortexes.  Each bait gives off a unique vortex, one on each side of the tail, so 10 vortexes created by a 5 way Rig.  In Southern Trout Eaters, Ken Huddleston says:  “I believe bigger, more mature fish will analyze a bait, and if everything is right, it will commit to the bait”.    Ken was talking about trophy fish.  But just as occasionally a trophy fish will act like a 2 pounder, the 2 pounders can act really smart and be really finicky and fussy.    Fish analyze a bait as it tracks thru the water, using more than just lateral lines and smell.  Think about a fish that has only ever tracked behind a bait that has 2 vortexes, or at best, 4 vortexes (double rig fluke, Front Runner on your topwater rig), but never 10 vortexes.  10 vortexes in a fishes mind = safe = commit.   And in fact, his buddies are so confident in 10Vs = safe = commit, they join the party and eat one too, so the angler catches 2 fish on one catch, way more often than normal.

The Grass Minnow is the most subtle swimming best vortex matching bait I know. The Weedless Shad is #2, the only difference being the Grass Minnow has a smaller profile and a swallow tail vortex (vs. the wedge tail).    So, while I was scrambling to fabricate my own Rigs or get real ones thru hook or crook, we started fishing multirig style, meaning, Booyah Quad Blade Spinnerbaits, double rigged flukes, and double rigged Grass Minnows.   The fishing on Kentucky Lake is tough,  don’t kid yourself. The Rig caught fish, but it wasn’t any kind of whack fest out there.   So, to fish with quad blade spinnerbaits and double rigs and start catching some fish again a little more regular, was pretty cool.    I went into the tournament having a decent quad blade spinnerbait and double rigged Grass Minnow bite.  But then came the Rigs.

Troy Anderson, Alabama Rig
Troy Anderson, my practice partner and eventual CoAngler Champion for the 2011 Everstart Championship on Kentucky Lake. Here is Troy, with 3" Hammers and a 4 way rig, with a spinnerblade teaser as #5 in the middle. We were in New Johnsonville here, so we were technically illegally fishing in TN water. We got an email at 4pm that day, last day of practice, that TN Fish&Game rules say no more than 3 baits. Basically, I bailed out of New J'ville and TN altogether based on that ruling alone. So did Dan Moorehead the Pro Champion and guys like Jim Tutt.

There is going to be landslides of changes, new innovations, new tournament rules and implications, and lots of fish getting caught as part of the Rig Effect.   Just fishing multiple baits at the same time, totally under-explored, and creating schools of baits totally under-explored and creating new rigs and methods for presentations, casting, etc make all new kinds of swimbait like implications, like the need for 8 foot rods and big round reels with big gears and heavy lines and heavy terminal tackle.  Strange and wild twist on fishing and swimbait fishing, but the bottom line thing I cannot get over is how well the fish eat the Rig.   It catches fish, and it doesn’t seem ‘obnoxious’ or grossly out of line with fishing regular single bait setups, IMO.  It fishes like a 8″ ROF 12 Huddleston Deluxe.  No kidding.

Re-Spooling your line for BigBait Fishing

Published: 17 October 2011
Written by Bait Bro
No comments
Categories: P-Line, Rigging, Shimano

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TnmMfXt86Pw]

Here is tutorial that might be elementary to some, but might be useful to others.  We use a ton of 20-25-30 pound P-Line CXX Moss Green Copolymer line for our bigbait fishing.  We change line often, and usually only use a ‘top shot’ of line, meaning we are only changing the top 75 or so yards of line (vs. the entire spool).  You just don’t know when you are going to get ‘the bite’ and believe changing line relatively often necessary because of the physics involved in lobbing baits that weigh 5 ounces.  The line take a beating just by casting it, stopping it with your thumb on the spool, etc.

A Brief History of Rigging Swimbaits

Published: 3 October 2011
Written by Bait Bro
No comments
Categories: Huddleston Deluxe, Rigging

Since I had a brief visit in Arkansas, I was able to go thru some old boxes of baits and find some things I wanted to share.   With the recent release of our “Southern Trout Eaters” Huddleston Rig tutorial video, I thought the following was a good chronology of events and that ultimately have led up to where we are with our the Southern Trout Eater Huddleston rig.  The rig is literally 10 years in the making.

The first softbait I ever fished with any consistency was the Eagle.  The Eagle is a line thru bait and it weighs a good 4-5 ounces.  It’s a straight up bigbait and was the first bait I ever committed to fishing for days and days.    The problem with the Eagle was hook up ratios.

swimbait hook harness for the Eagle swimbait
This is the stock hook setup for the Eagle. Hook up ratios were a real problem in the early days with this rig. Even though this hook setup is worthless fo the Eagle, notice the skills and the ability to use crimps, figure eights and 80# mono to create a double stinger trap hook. Note to self, save this, you will want to re-use this harness on another bait with for another application, someday.

We (Cameron Smith, my pal from Dana Point, CA) and I were fishing San Vicente lake back around 2001-2003 quite heavily with the Eagle.  Looking back on it, it is funny because I’m not kidding I would miss 5-8 bites per day on this rig.   It wasn’t until Cameron and I got to tinkering that we made some adjustments.  I remember Rob Belloni came fishing with me on San Vicente one day.  He took one look at the Eagle and the stock hook harness and told me I need way bigger hooks, maybe play with rigging?    Bass World West was going on in Southern California and so was Anglers Marine.  Both places had their own ways of rigging up Osprey’s, Eagles, etc.  It’s hard to say where exactly this stuff came from but we wanted hanging trebles, bigger hooks and had to leverage the line-thru design because those were the baits of the day…The Rising Son, The Rago Trout (name escapes me, Jerry’s original line-thru) and the Eagle kept me busy for years.   Our hookup ratios went way up with our modifications, but God what I’d do to go back in time and have those days back.   The fish were there and eating.  We’d just miss a lot. Upper water column swimming bait that we’d fish super fast at times.  Burning it, popping it, making it look like a trout trying to escape.  Probably not always the best retrieve, but it worked for us, for a time.

Eagle Swimbait with stock hook harness
Here is the Eagle with the stock harness properly oriented as if it was rigged. 4 trebles pointing down and we still missed most of the bites. This bait swims in the upper water colum and doesn't get inhaled like a Hudd much, hanging and bigger treble setups soon followed. Fish would literally bounce off the bait.

Here is what we did in response and the evolution of our rigs and rigging.  Double barrel crimps, 80# mono for the harness, cut paper clips, split rings and Gamakatsu hooks.  You can tell my early swimbait rigs and trials because my baits have Gamakatsu treble hooks on them.  I have long since been fishing Owner.    Just a superior family of treble hooks in my opinion, hands down.

eaglette swimbait rigging
The Eaglette, the smaller version of the Eagle. Notice the harness, allowed us to put a treble hook under the chin of the bait to catch the fish that made the kill shots to the head,and had a rear trap that either dangled below or was imbedded up in the bait. The size of the Eaglette coupled with this setup made our hookup ratios go way up.
Eaglette Harness
Notice, cut paper clips. The paper clips up front for the trap hook under the chin had to be modified to fit around the line thru created by the OEM. We are still modifying paper clips to fit our Huddleston's today. Used a split ring as where to tie your line, and created loops and and hook hangers with crimps and 80# mono.
3 treble harness rig for Eagle
Here is a 3 hook setup harness that we used on the full sized Eagle. One hook under the chin, one right below the line-thru, and one near the rear fins. This was creative, and helped us get more fish to stick that came up on the Eagle.
three treble harness for Eagle swimbait
Here is the 3 treble harness rig, better visualized how it sat on the bait. That's a lot of hardware on a bait, but it definitely helped get fish to stick.
2 hook harness
Full sized Eagle with a 2 hook harness rigging. The rear treble was dangling and this is a definite pre-cursor to where we got our Southern Trout Eaters Huddleston Rigging. Cut paper clips and double barrel crimps and 80#. Too small a rear hook for sure, looking back on it. Still, we caught them much better on this rig, way less hardware than the 3 hook harness which tends to foul up quite often let alone get bit as well.
sample harnesses
The 3 hook, 2 hook and stock trap hook rigs we used for baits like the Eagle, Rago Soft Trout bait and Rising Son
The early line thru baits
Back in the day it was all about Eagles, Ospreys/Rago, and Rising Son baits. This was pre-Huddleston Deluxe 8" Rainbow trout. These baits fished well near or at the surface, but are limited in so many ways compared to the Huddleston
the early line thru baits
The Rago Osprey was custom rigged to become a line thru in this case with a small coffee stirring straw, while the Rising Son wisely used a plastic insert. The Eagle used a machined piece of aluminum as the line thru and I can tell you there are a couple of Eagles at the bottom of San Vicente that broke off on the cast with 20# P-Line. Stupid me should have been using way heavier line and been more diligent about checking for burrs in the machined aluminum.

And then came the Castaic SoftBait Company.   Not that they ever went anywhere, it was all the sudden coming together.   Ken Huddleston used to work for Castaic or own it or something along those lines.  Ken had direct involvement in Castaic Bait Company for a time and that can be seen in this next evolution.  These soft Castaics are a definite precursor to the 8″ Huddleston Deluxe   You had to literally remove the internal stock harness of the Castaic bait, then use a coffee stir straw to create a line thru and come out the belly at the right angle and get it all right, then create your double hook harness.  The crazy thing was, I nailed this rig the first time I attempted it, and I caught a fish around the Chimney area of San Vicente within the first 15 minutes of fishing the rig, and the fish choked it.   About a 6 pounder.  Anyway, to me, this modified and glued up and line-thru’d Castaic rig is a clear connection to where we are with the Huddleston Deluxe today.

castaic swimbait
Removed the internal 'top hook' harness from the bait, glued it back together, created a line thru with a coffee stir straw, and leveraged a double hook harness rig. Clearly headed in the direction of the Huddleston Deluxe of today.

And here is a Castaic Sardine with a trap hook rigging.  I will drop down to 60# mono and use the same 1.0B double barrel crimps to have a little bit lighter and more flexible harness that fits the smaller baits better.  The Castaic Sardine is an excellent bait for those looking to explore blueback herring.   If you do a little homework on herring and sardines, you’ll find the two are quite related, and both saltwater run.

castaic sardine rig
The Castaic Sardine with a mini version of our trap hook setup.
castaic sardine swimbait rig
Up close, those are #2 and #4 ST-36 Stingers....way too light weight of hooks for me now. This rig caught them Lake Lanier fish pretty good one spring for me. But they inhaled it. I'd probably use ST-56 in the same sizes now, but the bottom line is you can rig small swimbaits with a harness and double trap rig. I masked the hooks and hardware to match the belly of the bait, again all relating to things we did to get to our current Hudd rig.

There has been a lot of trial and error in our rigs and rigging and there will continue to be more.  The better you get with rigging and the tools of rigging, the more you’ll be able to create your own rigs for your own applications.

The Southern Trout Eaters Huddleston Rig

Published: 26 September 2011
Written by Bait Bro
2 Comments
Categories: 2011 Tournament Fishing, Huddleston Deluxe, Rigging

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UwTRqjynJ4E]

Here are the components you need to do the ‘southern trout eater’ Huddleston Rig.:

8″ Huddleston Deluxe Rainbow Trout

Owner ST-66 Stinger Treble Hooks (#4 in the rear & #2 up front)

Owner Hyper Wire Split Ring #5

Double Barrel Crimps, Size 1B

80# Leader Material (for making the harness)

Hand Crimping Tool

Standard Paper Clip

If you want to see this rig in action, we highly recommend you take a look at our film, Southern Trout Eaters.  70% of the fish in the film (and 75+ fish over 5 pounds are featured in the film) are caught on this rig.