It’s becoming common here to fish with a boilie (cooked doughball) on a hair rig for carp. The boilie is attached via a retainer and a short piece of line to a single hook—so that when the carp sucks in the doughball along with the closely attached hook and swims off, the unobstructed hook sinks into the corner of its mouth as the line gets tight.
My original experiment for flatheads, which I call the Colorado River rig, was to attach a short piece of heavy braided line to the bend of an 8/0 circle hook and then attach a 1/0 short-shanked O’Shaunessy-style livebait hook to the other end. The bait is hooked on the smaller hook, leaving the circle hook free for better hookups.
Baits are more likely to stay lively longer when impaled on small hooks, and their movement in current is less restricted. The rig also expands options for bait hooking. For instance, it doesn’t make much sense to nose-hook a 4-inch bluegill with an 8/0 hook and expect it to last long or appear natural, but this is easily done using the smaller attached hook. Baits hooked in the area above the anal fin or through the pelvic fin area retain the ability to swim upright, even with the added weight of the detached heavy circle hook.
The small attached hook should be about as wide in the gap as the thickness of the bait—large enough to hook a bait securely for a good cast and the initial strike, but small enough so it won’t be detected by the fish as it takes off on the initial run. For flatheads, I use the Mustad 92677, a heavy-wire short-shanked O’Shaunessy-style livebait hook, in either 2/0 or 4/0 depending on bait size. The Eagle Claw Lazer Sharp L317MG (3X strong) and L318N (extra strong) are short-shanked livebaiters that fall into this category.
The bait attachment hook should be made of heavy wire, making it less likely to tear out on the cast or on the initial strike. That’s also important if a big catfish gets hooked on the bait hook. I once landed a 42-pound flathead on Colorado River rig’s bait hook, when the circle hook missed its mark, and I’ve landed numerous fish on the smaller hooks of other double-hook rigs when the main hook failed to connect.
The downside of using two hooks is that one of them is more prone to finding a snag, when fishing close to brush or other cover. Often, a hooked catfish heads for timber with one of the hooks dangling outside its mouth, increasing chances for fouling on a limb.
