The Alabama Rig works best when it's set up the way it was designed to be fished – with an array of five baits, each with its own hook. But the umbrella-style contraption, which has been all the rage since Paul Elias used it to blow away the field last month at the Guntersville FLW Tour Open, is still effective in other configurations – at least on suspended fish during the fall.
That's the consensus of several Top-10 finishers from the recent EverStart Championship at Kentucky Lake who used it on the Tennessee side. A Tennessee regulation regarding umbrella-type rigs, put on the books in 2002 primarily to prevent the overharvest of stripers, says that if they contain more than three baits, then only one may have a hook of size 6 or larger. The regulation is moot if hook sizes are 8 or smaller, but in most cases that's simply not enough metal to control an angry 4-pound bass – or maybe more than one such fish, since multiple hookups occur rather frequently
BassFan spoke with four high finishers who fished the A-Rig in Tennessee and learned that, for the most part, they simply made minor tweaks for a three-bait arrangement and thus kept it from falling under the umbrella-rig classification. As might be expected, their setups were somewhat varied.
4th: Jim Tutt
> 20 fish, 55-02
Veteran Texan Jim Tutt tried the A-Rig two ways while plying Tennessee waters – with five baits but only the one on the center (slightly longer) wire carrying a hook, and also with just three baits.
"On the one with the (single) hook I used a 1/8-ounce jighead with a regular (Zoom) Swimmin' Fluke," he said. "On the teasers, I used the same jigheads, but with the hooks cut off and the baits glued on. On those, I used Swimmin' Fluke Jrs.
"I caught two fish that way, but I missed four or five and I'm assuming it was because they were hitting the other baits. I didn't have much confidence in that."
He eventually switched to the three-hook setup with baits attached to the two bottom wires as well as the one in the center. He just left the two top wires to flop around as they might.
He liked that arrangement better, even though he figures it attracted fewer bites. It produced two key fish on day 3 and a 5 1/2-pounder and another weigh-in fish on the final day.
Jess Caraballo said there's no way he'd have made the Top 10 without the Alabama Rig.
"My conclusion was that five baits were better than three, but three were a thousand times better than no Alabama Rig at all. I had one at Guntersville, but I didn't realize at the time what was going on.
"I didn't know the power of it."
5th: Koby Kreiger
> 20 fish, 54-12
Florida's Koby Kreiger came to a similar conclusion as Tutt on the question of whether five baits but only one hook was better than three baits that each contained a hook. He also ended up going the three-bait route.
"I know guys who threw it with five baits with just the hook in the center and they got a lot of bites, but they didn't catch near as many," he said. "I probably didn't get as many bites, but the percentage that I put in the boat was better."
His configuration was the same as Tutt's, with swimbaits on the center wire and the two on the bottom. He said his bites were on the middle bait about 80 percent of the time.
"I think the Alabama Rig will be good anytime the fish are eating shad, whether it's the fall, the spring or even the heat of summer. Where I live in Okeechobee, Fla., you obviously can't throw it in the heavy grass, but I'm sure some people will start messing with it and trying to get it to do other things.
"For what it's designed to do, it's very effective."
8th: Jess Caraballo
> 18 fish, 51-06
Jess Caraballo, a resident of Connecticut, fishes the FLW Tour as a co-angler and often rooms with EverStart Championship winner Dan Morehead (who fished the A-Rig only in Kentucky waters) and Scott Suggs. They didn't have any spare A-Rigs to give him, though, so he waited in a long line in a gas station parking lot to purchase a couple from inventors Andy and Tammy Poss, who brought 300 of them and sold them to the competitors for the regular price of $25.
The Alabama Rig, in its standard configuration with five baits and five large hooks, is illegal in Tennessee waters.
His initial experience with the Rig was on the first day of competition. He spread the three wires that were attached to baits an equal distance apart and let the other wires hang down the middle.
"Some guys were snipping some of the wires, but there was no way I was cutting up a $25 bait," he said. "It definitely caught some key fish for me and there's no way I would've made the Top 10 without it."
He employed a Berkley Hollow Belly swimbaits on the middle wire and a different brand on the two on the outside.
"I was trying for a different action and a different look, but every fish except one hit the Hollow Belly. Looking back now, I probably should've used the Hollow Belly on all three."
10th: Mike McDonald
> 18 fish, 46-11
North Carolinian Mike McDonald manipulated the wires on his A-Rigs so that he had three baits at the bottom that were all at the same level in the water column. He turned the remaining two wires downward so they'd act as a weedguard and "kick up a little mud."
On one Rig he used two 4 1/2-inch Strike King Shadalicious swimbaits on the outside and a 5 1/2-incher in the middle, all in gizzard shad. On the other he had three Yum Money Minnows, and he said both produced about the same number of fish.
He started day 1 throwing a crankbait and then a spinnerbait, but picked up the A-Rig after neither produced. He popped a 3-pounder on his third cast and double keepers on his seventh.
"I threw (the A-Rig) 95% of the time the rest of the way," he said. "I caught all of my (weigh-in) fish on it except one good one on a spinnerbait and a keeper on a little crank.
"It was definitely a game-changer and it's going to change the face of fishing. I can think of a lot of applications that it might work for."
