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UK anglers are increasingly borrowing rigs designed for fishing in foreign lands. Many rigs designed for saltwater also have applications for freshwater predators and vice versa. Experimentation is a key part of lure fishing.
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The Texas rig is useful when fishing on the bottom over rough, snaggy ground. It’s also one of the cheapest rigs out there so is a good staple rig to keep your costs down.
The Texas rig was invented in the US for targeting freshwater bass in structure. Since the freshwater bass over there are keen on living in the snaggiest ground, using weedless hooks provides an advantage. The Texas Rig is a go-to rig on the US professional fishing circuit.
In the UK we use the Texas rig to catch perch in fresh water and wrasse, pollock, bass and cod in the sea. It’s the most popular rig for wrasse fishing because it allows you to fish very rough ground in a cost effective manner compared to other rigs like pre-rigged soft plastics. For bass fishing, the Texas rig works but there are better rigs, because the free running lead can interfere with a natural lure presentation if bass are wary.
Essentially, you have a single weedless hook with a bullet weight directly above it, running freely on your line. Some people put a bead between the hook and the bullet lead to protect their knot.
The Texas rig is fished over snaggy ground on or near the bottom. It is also effective when deadsticking (leaving the lure motionless on the bottom). It is not the best rig if you’re fishing above the seabed because other rigs like jig heads have a superior presentation.
The key aspect of this rig is the way that the hook is threaded through your soft lure. To rig a hook weedlessly, you push your hook point through the tip of the lure at the top, then back through the middle so that the hook point lies flat directly on the upper surface of the soft lure.
Your lure is much less likely to get snagged, but when a fish bites or you strike, the hook point comes true. The rig is even less likely to snag if you ‘peg’ the rig, by adding a float stop or bit of elastic to prevent the cone weight from riding up the line.
You can use any type of soft plastic with the Texas rig. For Perch, creature baits are popular, and having floating claws can aid presentation by lifting the lure up off the bottom. Getting the right hook size is important too. One mistake you can make with this rig is using a hook that’s too small for your soft plastic so that the weedless hook point does not come out easily once the lure has been taken by a fish. Another mistake is using a hook so big that it limits the movement of your soft lure, or rigging the soft plastic so that the eye of the hook is visible. Finally, using bullet weights that are too heavy can ruin the action of your lure, making it move very unnaturally. The next rig we look at presents a solution for this.
When using the Texas rig in the sea in the UK, crush your barbs. It’s difficult to remove barbed hooks from the mouths of small, toothy mouths of wrasse.
Carolina rig with a flashing weedless hook – note that the leader between the swivel and hook is longer than it appears in this photo
The Carolina rig is used for fishing on the bottom over snaggy ground. The main advantage of a Carolina rig over a texas rig is that you can fish with larger cone or bullet weights without interfering with your lure’s action so much. This allows you to cast further on windy days or when you want to cover lots of ground.
The limitation of the Carolina rig is that it’s harder to feel bites because your rod is connected to the weight, not the hook. When Wrasse fishing, the Texas rig is a better choice because it gives you a couple of extra seconds to get the fish away from snags.
If you wanted to give a fish a bit of freeline but then meet resistance a few seconds later, you could add a float stop 7-10” above your bullet weight to stop it riding up your line past that point.
Dropshotting is a finesse method for presenting soft plastic lures. This means it is for presenting lures more subtly than you can with other rigs. This is because the dropshot is separate from your lure, so when the rig is fished very slowly with the weight on the bottom, it’s mainly just a single unweighted lure the fish will see. If you’ve done any bait fishing, you will notice the drop shot rig is similar to a paternoster rig, except a snood is rarely used to connect the hook to your leader.
Fluorocarbon RigsIt’s important that you use the right knot when attaching a hook on a dropshot rig. The palomar is the best knot for this purpose.
The dropshot rig is hugely popular for freshwater perch fishing in winter, because it allows you to present lures at low speeds while keeping your lure in the strike zone for the fish. Usually this means your lure is about 1m off the bottom, slowly twitching back to you.
The drop shot rig is useful for winter perch fishing and fishing for wrasse and pollock over rough ground when you want to retrieve very slowly on the bottom but keep your soft plastic off the seabed itself. It’s also useful for covering more ground than you can with a jig head, because they cast better.
When I say slowly, I mean seriously slowly. Some people will turn the handle a couple of times then leave the lure for a 10-30 seconds then repeat all the way back in. It takes patience, but in the winter months when fish are lethargic with their metabolisms slowed, this can be deadly.
One major advantage of this rig is that you can fish with very small lures while still having excellent casting distance and contact with your lure. This is because the lead can be whatever size is best for your rod and the hook size can be whatever size you want for the fish. For perch fishing a 7g dropshot is great, when shorefishing in the sea a 20-50g is more typical. You wouldn’t be able to put a 30g cone weight on a 2” soft lure without interfering with its presentation on a jig head or texas rig for example. All of this means the dropshot rig allows you to search large areas of water with small lures.
Finally, the hook is usually attached directly to your leader rather than on the end of a snood. This means you feel bites immediately.
The Jika rig is similar to the cheb rig in that it is based around a simple split ring. Attached to the split ring is a weedless hook and a drop shot weight. This split ring allows you to change the weight you’re fishing with while still keeping your weight and hook connected so they stay together.
The Jika rig is similar to the cheb rig in that it is based around a simple split ring. Attached to the split ring is a weedless hook and a drop shot weight. This split ring allows you to change the weight you’re fishing with while still keeping your weight and hook connected so they stay together.
Where the Jika rig differs from most rigs is that the weight is a drop shot weight. This is a long thin cylinder.
Unlike with a regular jig head, it’s possible to fish with larger weights with smaller hooks, to increase your casting distance. Unlike with a texas rig, the weight is not free moving on the line, so bites are more easily detected. This allows you to quickly retrieve fish away from snags. The lure is also more free to move because the hook and weight are not directly connected. This improves the lure’s action.
When you’re fishing vertically in rough ground or directly on the bottom and you don’t want your weight to be free to move up your line. Or, when you want extreme connectivity to the bottom that a cone weight does not achieve.
The unique advantage of the Jika rig is the incredible sensitivity it provides to the bottom. Something about dropshot weights having a small surface area on the bottom seems to mean you feel much more of the ground you’re fishing. On a modern lure rod you can even work out exactly what the ground you’re fishing is covered with. Round weights on a regular jig head don’t send this feedback to the same degree.
Reach for the Jika rig when you want to fish vertically in a tight spot, such as between a gap in lilly pads or down a narrow rocky gulley. Lures will fall vertically and can be jigged up and down with a great presentation. Also reach for a Jika rig for winter finesse fishing on the bottom in the UK.
A spin rig is more of an American term for just using spinners. It’s simply a spinner attached directly to your leader or mainline. A spinner is just a shiny piece of metal with a hook attached that wiggles and shines in the water like a baitfish.
The only thing beginners need to know is that it’s always best for your spinner to not require any additional weight in order to be cast. If your lure is an appropriate weight for your rod and if your rod is appropriate for the ground you’re fishing, you don’t need a lead weight.
This is the most popular rig in the UK. Use the spin rig when you want to cast a long way and fish the whole water column quickly for pelagic species. It’s one of the best lures for mackerel for this reason. Don’t call it the spin rig in the UK though unless you actually are one of our chubby American bros. (God bless America)
Jig heads are weighted hooks that you thread a soft plastic lure onto. They make it possible to change your lure very quickly without retying your rig. There are several types of jig head with different uses, and we will go through each type below. The most common and cheapest jig heads have ‘ball heads’…
