Hook, line, and sinker—what could be complicated about rigging up to catch a little green fish with a brain the size of a sunflower seed? Well, the crafty minds of keen bassers have indeed found better ways to catch bass in various situations. Why surely you know how to Carolina rig, Texas rig, California rig, Jersey rig, Kansas rig, nail rig, Mojo rig, wacky rig, do-nothing rig, Slider rig? Okay, so the Kansas rig has yet to hit the big time.

So many ways to hook and present plastic baits. Knowing how to rig ‘em and when to throw ‘em will boost your catch in 1998.

Hooks

The hook’s still the critical element in catching a fish, and anglers since the dawn of man have given it considerable thought. Amble the archaeological aisles of a museum and you’ll see hooks of bone, ivory, wood, and stone; long shanks, short shanks, wide gaps, circle hooks, outbarbs, and more. Hooks carved to match the mouths of various finny food items and the ways these early anglers rigged to catch them.

To an extent, we’ve reinvented the wheel, but with better materials. The move toward premium hooks got underway with the importation of high-carbon steel hooks from England and Japan in the early 1980s. Black Weapon, Gamakatsu, and Owner became the watchwords of hi-tech bass pros. Just a few years ago, VMC began using vanadium for worm hooks as well as for trebles.

Anglers became familiar with the relative advantages and disadvantages of needle points and cutting points. Straight-shank models gave way to offset styles that are easily rigged to keep the worm, craw, or other plastic bait hanging straight, with the hook eye barely hidden in the nose of the bait and the point close to the edge for an easy hookset.

Tru-Turn developed a line of cam-action hooks, designed so the bent shank brings the hook into an upright position as it’s pulled forward during a hookset. They have remained a favorite of many top bassers for over 15 years. Another novel design that has remained in vogue is the Eagle Claw Messler Rotating Hook, now available with an offset shank to further complicate this hook’s tortured appearance.

To accommodate larger baits and to hook outsize bass, wide-gap hooks entered the market. Gamakatsu and Owner designed wide-gap hooks with wide bends and offset shanks to accommodate wide-body baits like the Zoom Fluke and Slug-Go—the Gamakatsu EWG Hook and the Owner Rig’N Hook.

New hooks of this style include Mustad’s Mega-Bite, VMC’s offset shank model angled to hold worms straight, Berkley’ Wide Gap Rigging Hook, Eagle Claw’s L713 Series, and Daiichi’s XPoint model. These hooks make skin-hooking grubs easier, when rigging them behind a split shot or a full-fledged Carolina rig. This style of hook also works well for Texas rigging a worm or craw.

Florida bassers Tommy Clark and Shaw Grigsby designed the HP (high performance) hook for fishing tube baits. The hook is a modified Kahle design with a clip at the eye to hold a tube. Now made by Eagle Claw, the HP in a #1 or 1/0 is the favorite rigging due to high hookup percentage and the clip, which secures the tube.

Novel styles of worm hooks have appeared, like Eagle Claw’s R-Bend models with teflon coating. (Don’t lose the instructions or you’ll never get this one rigged right.) Tournament Lures’ Niflor finish initiated the coating craze around 1985 with their smooth finish intended to slide easily through jaw tissue.

On Berkley’s outbarb Gold Point Hooks, the point is coated with Xylan for friction-free sets. In a return to older styles, Mustad has added the Denny Brauer Flippin’ Hook, a straight-shank needle-point style available in 1/0 through 5/0. The straight pull gives a powerful bite for hooking big bass at close range.

Hook size generally ranges from #1 for small plastic worms or tubes up to 5/0 for rigging big lizards or flipping meaty worms. Owner widened the playing field with its Oversize Worm Hook, in 7/0 and 11/0, with a 90-degree bend and long offset portion of the shank to secure big baits. And whoever decided that hooks could only come in full sizes didn’t convince Eagle Claw, which offers their Featherlite Lazer Sharp offset-shank worm hook in half sizes from 0.5/0 to 3.5/0.

Manufacturers also have sought to improve the offset design for worm hooks, which readily tears worms on hooksets or even when panfish peck the bait. Mister Twister’s Keeper was the original design to hold a worm in place with a spike that penetrated through the center of the worm. Their new Smart Hook goes one better by replacing the barbed wire with a spindle-shape section of plastic that slides into the plastic. It doesn’t tear plastic.

Instead, the suction between hard and soft plastic holds baits firmly. Mustad also has explored this realm with its Needle Power Lock Line that features a double-barb wire to hold baits at the hook eye. And the same system is used in Mustad’s fine-wire Fin-A’cky hooks designed for tubes, grubs, and other small plastics.

Swivels

The metallurgists who toil over new hook designs and materials haven’t spent much time on swivels, another component of some riggings. Fortunately, these simple devices work well with little need for improvement. While a barrel swivel won’t spin like one with a high-grade ball bearing, it also won’t freeze as bearing swivels can. Sampo built a better mousetrap, but bulk brass models function fine for most rigging applications.

While Carolina rigs require a swivel to set the heavy sinker several feet in front of the plastic bait, California rigs (which set a light sinker a foot or two ahead of the bait) and floating worm rigs work best with a swivel. For floating worms, which don’t really float but slowly drift below the surface, the swivel provides sufficient weight.

Rattlers

Interest in sound production led manufacturers to first offer thin glass rattle chambers containing tiny shot, to be inserted into plastic baits. When shaken, they produce a soft rattle. Chambers of steel, brass, and plastic have followed, for insertion into the bait—Woodies Rattlers, Hart PRO-ducer Rattles, Blue Fox Tor-P-Do Worm Rattles, and PRADCO’s new Excalibur worm rattles in four sizes.

Zoom and Zorro offer rattle chambers that slide along the line or can be inserted into a bait after a chunk of plastic is removed with a coring tool. Midsouth Tackle’s new aluminum rattle chamber fits inside tube baits. Obviously, the benefit of these devices is only achieved when the bait is actively fished and shaken.

Sinkers

Just as in the old days, we’re sunk without sinkers. After development of the bullet-shape sliding sinker in the 1960s, little changed, and bassers lost no sleep wondering about sinkers, except maybe whether a 3/16 or a 1/4-ounce weight would work best in a given situation.

But modern machining technology, spurred by threats of a ban on lead sinkers, led to new metals and styles. While Top Brass Tackle had been producing brass slip sinkers, fears that lead would be banned boosted interest in this material. And as anglers fished brass, they noted advantages over lead. It’s much harder and resists denting. This hardness also produces louder clicks when the sinker contacts the hook, the bottom, or a glass bead placed between the sinker and hook.

Thunder Bullets made the most of the brass and glass craze, machining several shapes of brass weights from 1/16 to 11⁄4 ounce, including some with rattles inside the sinker. Their Brass N’ Bullets are bullet-shape while their Thunder Rigs are more egg-shape for Carolina rigging. Top Brass and Gambler also offer rattling brass worm weights. Jawtec Worms devised brass sinkers and also hedged their bets with steel, since legislation proposed by the Environmental Protection Agency would have banned or restricted production of brass as well as lead weights. In the same vein, Bullet Weights developed a line of UltraSteel weights, made of an alloy called Ultra Steel 2000.

King of the hill in the loud rattle race are Kicker Fish Industries’ Kicker Rig and Top Brass’ Carolina Quake sinkers, with their large brass tumbler that slides in a chamber within the Carolina rigging-type weight. The Kicker Rig includes a brass chamber that screws together and houses 1/8-ounce lead discs that bang against each other. Weight is adjusted by adding and removing discs. The unit seals with an O-ring. While the bright gold flash of brass may at times attract bass (sinker bites often occur), anglers fishing clear water sometimes feel the unnatural flash may spook fish. Jawtec stains their sinkers black, while Top Brass offers eight colors to mix and match with plastic baits. Both companies package rigs of brass sinkers and beads, with collars and swivels to complete a Carolina rig.

Use of lead has been restricted in parts of Canada and limited areas in the United States, with further limitations unlikely. But brass weights have convinced anglers that they’re easily worth the price (several times more than lead). To take further advantage of brass’ acoustic powers, Jawtec Tackle offers Amplifiers, and Top Brass has Carolina Clickers and Pro Tickers to place between the swivel and glass bead, to sandwich the bead between brass. And Bullet Weights has a 3-piece system to produce loud clicks for Carolina or Texas rigging.

Even before the rush for brass weights began, Gambler’s Florida rigs revolutionized plastic worm fishing. In thick cover, pegging the sinker and worm together helps the bait snake through and present a more realistic fall. The Florida Rig added a thin tube and wire corkscrew to the concave side of the bullet weight to screw on a plastic bait.

Gambler has adapted this rigging system to their rattling brass sinker. Thunder Bullets devised the Bait Lock, a pegging system using a brass weight with a spearlike collar on the concave end to penetrate the head of the plastic bait. Lunker City Fishing Specialties also offers a similar pegging system on their line of Lunker Grip sinkers. Bullet Weights offers Ultra Steel weights, with a hook that catches the eye of a worm hook, pegging the rig. For further enticement, these weights include a Permascent odor.

To make the link between hook and sinker even closer, manufacturers offer weighted hooks. The Blue Fox Hidden Head, devised by Minnesota bass pro Tom Zrust, simply places a narrow 1/32- to 1/4-ounce conical lead around the shank of a worm hook (#1 through 4/0). As the worm is threaded onto the hook, the lead slides into the head. The rig’s width, however, won’t accommodate thin worms. M & N Lures offers a similar rig with a notched weight up the shank of a Gamakatsu hook, to make a weighted swimming worm or to provide a more gliding action with a pegged slip sinker.

Mustad’s weighted Needle Power Lock and Fin-A’cky hooks expand this weighting concept with 1/32-, 1/16-, and 1/8-ounce weights added to the shank and bend of the hook. Also, three models include a 1/32-ounce weight on the double barb keeper to provide a slow horizontal drop. Mister Twister’s latest addition is the Swimmin’ Smart Hook, which places a sleeve of lead around the hook shank, and Eagle Claw’s double-barb LT95, which adds a triangular lead below the eye on this offset-shank hook.

Now that we have the components, it’s time to rig up and catch some bass. (Continued in "Rigging Wrinkles For Big Ol’ Bass Part 2.")