The Rebirth Of The Carolina Rig

By Jonathan LePera
Special to BassFan

Sometimes winning techniques fall by the wayside. Made famous during Jack Chancellor’s 1985 Bassmaster Classic win, the Carolina rig grew in popularity and became a staple on everyone’s deck during the following 10 years. New lures came to pass – fads, crazes, and must-have baits soon pushed it to the bottom of the pile.

Bassmaster Elite Series competitors Mark Davis and John Crews both have a storied past with the rig. Takahiro Omori didn’t put it down during his first two tournaments on the Bassmaster circuit, while Seth Feider taught the bass fishing world a thing or two with his charge-to-the-front performance at the 2016 Mississippi River Bassmaster Elite Series.

With Age Comes Wisdom

Davis, a three-time B.A.S.S. Angler of the Year, recalls the first Carolina rigs in the mid-1980s were pre-fabricated and included a “little molded worm all folded up and had the leader already attached with small hooks and it came in a little package,” pre-tied on a 12-pound monofilament leader.

During the late '80s and early '90s, the rig affectionately known as the ball and chain was a player on the tour at lakes like Rayburn, so long as there was a Zoom lizard at the terminal end. After coming home off the road with his rods still rigged in the box, Davis took a buddy out on Lake Ouachita, his home waters. Previously, he’d only thrown the rig during the fall. His buddy hung a 6-pounder on his first cast.

It was so good that he’d hide all his rods when returning to the dock after a guide trip hoping to keep it a secret. Sure enough, he got busted by some guys spying who waited for Davis at the dock. They wanted answers.

“Guys with binoculars saw us casting this thing; they didn’t know what it was," Davis recalled. "We were using really long leaders, 6 to 7 feet, but the clear water was key."

Despite the rig being deemed a “small-fish technique," Davis credits a number of his Top-10 finishes to throwing the Carolina rig.

While the rig is a notorious tool for probing off-shore structure, Davis can be shallow-minded. During the spawn, he targets shallow fish holding on bare spots in the grass or where grass grows 3 feet or less. He’ll also target stumps by making long casts and pulling his weight until he hits one. Then, he’ll crawl his bait through the sweet spot and kill the bait.

“You’ve got to let it lay, sit, and go back to it and just barely move that weight and lure," he said. "Most people fish it way too fast. You need to slow down and know at what time during the process of the cast you’re at by what you are feeling, when to slow it down, and even when to stop it is the key to really catching them on a Carolina rig.”

Some may see that as an unorthodox view, but Davis insists that when targeting man-made brush piles and faced with super windy conditions, he’ll shorten the leader and lighten up to a 1/2-ounce weight, but will upsize if needed.

“Lots of times when the wind gets to blowing hard, you can’t really fish brush with a Texas rig,” he said.

Davis prefers to fish a lead sinker – 3/4-ounce normally – because when tungsten gets wedged between rocks, there’s no give to it and it can’t be worked loose. If he’s fishing sand or grass on lakes like Toledo Bend or Rayburn, tungsten gets the nod. The only time he’ll upsize to 1 ounce is under windy conditions where drifting is the only option.

Clackers never proved their worth for Davis. He says he has enough problems trying to keep hungry bass from hitting his sinkers, especially at Rayburn and Toledo Bend.

The clearer the water, the longer the leader he’ll run, up to 7 feet, whereas stained water requires the lure to be closer to the weight so that once a bass hears the sinker they can find the soft plastic.

Using a 7-foot, 11-inch Lew's Magnum Casting Rod paired with a Lew's BB2 Pro with 6:1 gearing, he’ll spool it with 20-pound Seaguar InvizX fluorocarbon and run the same for a leader line.

“People used to have an illusion that the lure is floating up behind the weight but as we all know – soft plastics sink," he said. "When you put a hook in it certainly sinks; it’s just scooting along the bottom back behind the weight."

His favorite baits include a Strike King Rage Lizard, Rage Monkey, or Rage Bug in green pumpkin, watermelon/red, red bug, and black patterns. Most times, he’ll rig those with an offset round-bend hook but will use a wide-gap offset on certain lures. He took 4th at the Toledo Bend Bassmaster Elite Series in 2014 Carolina-rigging a 5-inch Strike King Caffeine Shad. When bass prefer a “do-nothing” bait, a 4- to 7-inch finesse worm is ideal, he noted. The cleaner the water, the subtler the color and action of the bait.

Crews’ Home-Grown Influence

Having grown up in North Carolina, Crews grew up fishing a Carolina rig almost by default since Chancellor invented it in the South. Mix in some Virginian influence and you have a group of lakes that fish quite similarly. Many of those lakes are void of any cover, sparse at best, with a relatively hard bottom.

“A Carolina rig is a good choice because it covers a lot of water and disturbs the bottom, bringing a finesse presentation behind that heavier weight,” Crews said.

Once he hit the pro trail, the C-rig became a great way to learn the lay of the land and be his “eyes beneath the water.”

Crews also doesn’t believe that the bait floats off the bottom or that it's a great technique for fish suspended off the bottom.

“It’s good when fish are on the bottom," he noted. "That’s when they’re more active and searching the bottom to find that bait. When you are dragging that C-rig, unless you are fishing some weird floating bait, it’s not really going to come off the bottom much.”

The constant clanging of the sinker along the bottom will get the attention of an aggressive bass or change the mood of an inactive one. Crews prefers the cylindrical lead sinkers ranging from 3/8-ounce to 1 ounce in front of one or two beads and finally a SPRO Power Swivel before connecting a leader.

“I like to fish as heavy a weight that I can get away with," he added. "When fishing gravel and light cover, I like 1 ounce. It makes more commotion and draws fish in from further away, plus you can cast it far and cover water. I’ll gradually decrease weight if I’m fishing rock.”

When fishing a 1-ounce sinker, he’ll opt for 20-pound Sunline Shooter fluorocarbon because it's super sensitive and tough as nails. He’ll drop down to 18- or 16-pound as his sinker lightens. His leader is never more than 14-pound test and most often 12 so that if he gets hung up he can break off without losing the whole rig.

It’s not a technique that you can be lazy with. He suggests checking knots and line for abrasions often. When fishing a long leader, be careful that the line can loop around and tie a rogue knot, thereby weakening it.

He’ll work the bait on a 7-foot, 3-inch Cashion medium-heavy casting rod with a high-speed reel and he’ll drag the rig and sweep it, moving it anywhere from a foot to 5 feet at one time. He’ll drag and stop it, repeating the motion until he gets a bite while preferring short pulls instead of a steady retrieve. He’ll set the drag tight enough to get a solid hookset, but with a little slip.

Crews shakes his head in disbelief when anglers set the hook like they’re punching mats.

“When a bass hits it, start reeling up the slack because two things are going to happen," he said. "When you put that constant pressure on them, they’ll have it relatively deep because they feel the resistance of it pulling away. When you are reeling the slack, you can tell if a fish has it or drops it.”

If the latter occurs, wait from them to come back before cinching your line, loading the rod up, and sweeping the rod to the side.

On the business end, he’ll rig a 3/0 to 5/0 Gamakatsu offset shank round-bend worm hook with either two variations of baits – those with undulating tails and those without. Let the mood of the fish tell you what they want and be willing to experiment.

When targeting larger or aggressive fish, he prefers a Missile Baits Destroyer, it’s smaller counter-part the Baby Destroyer, a more compact Missile Baits Crawfather or the longer Tomahawk.

When fishing in Florida or swamp water, the bruiser flash color excels, while green-pumpkin flash is a good all-around hue. Watermelon red also works well throughout the year, especially in the immediate post-spawn. Where the Carolina-rig can excel is when they want something plain and simple like 8-inch needle worms, centipedes, little finesse worms or a Missile Baits Fuse 4.4.

The New Kid

If anyone has brought the Carolina-rig back to the forefront, it’s Feider, the kid from Minnesota who staged a late-season charge this year on the Bassmaster Elite Series. Feider fished it a bunch growing up on famed largemouth factory, Lake Minnetonka, often alternating between the rig and a football jig to put money in the bank.

His recent runner-up finish at the Mississippi River highlighted a year that saw Feider consistently throw it – just like old times. Upon watching Bassmaster Live during the La Crosse, Wis., event, it was noticeable that not only was Feider fishing a Carolina rig, but it didn’t take long to get to the bottom.

“That’s a little Mississippi River deal to be honest,” he said. “Guys I know down there told me that was the deal. That got me on it more than anything else.”

Feider first tried to pick off the aggressive fish with swimjigs and topwaters, reminding himself that there were probably more fish there. Once the reaction bite died, he finished off the less active fish. By manipulating the current and structure, he cast his rig and let the current subtly bring the bait past the fish while getting their attention with the sand that was kicked up by the sinker.

The “juice” was a neat spot that that Feider dialed in quickly.

“When you get a little bit of flow over the sandbars, those fish stack up and they’re in key places where it's draining out of backwaters," he said, "or a lot of bait gets washed through there with the current so those fish will set up right on those sand bars. They’re as close as they can get to those backwaters through those side chutes."

He said that if he’d taken his boat any further, he’d would’ve been stuck. Typically, his boat was in 3 to 4 feet of water, but on a couple of them there were big holes of water behind them “so there were super hard washes on the backside of those sandbars.”

On Day 2, faced with clouds and rain, his fish moved on top of the sand bar sometimes in a foot of water. Once it got brighter, they “slid out to 2 to 3 feet of water on the backside of that drop.”

Feider knew his spot was pretty specific.

“You could make a million casts and not catch one," he said. "It was real specific with the current seams. You had to hit it and they had to have a little shell on it too,” he said.

With any other bait, by the time he’d feel the sweet spot he’d be through it. Once his rig hit the sweet spot, he’d kill it.

“Now, my bait is sinking where it needs to be instead of a foot past it,” he said.

He used a half-unce sinker due to the fairly heavy current. It was so strong, he’d use his outboard to drive back to his spot and needed his Minn Kota on 70 percent to hold.

He kept his leader short – 12 inches long – due to both the current and water depth.

“When those fish would eat, they’d immediately turn around and swim at you as fast as they could off that break," he added. "I lost five fish over the course of 4 days that any one of them would have made a difference. It was that hard to get a hook in them."

While his second-place finish was impressive to some, Feider knew he’d left something out there.

“When you’re moving through that current, you have slack in your line, they’re running at you, there’s current blowing, and you feel a tick and crank three or four times and swing, that wasn’t enough," he said. "The ones that I reeled down on and got tighter on when I jerked, I landed every one of them. It was my own fault."

Both his main line and leader were 17-pound Suffix fluorocarbon fished with a half-ounce VMC worm weight, one bead and 3/0 VMC Extra Wide Gap hook rigged with a Zoom Speed Craw that he’d dipped the tails in orange die to make the bait stand out better. After breaking a fish off at the knot day 1, he added a bead to his rig for Day 2.

An 8-foot Daiwa Steez AGS heavy-action rod paired with a Daiwa Zillion SG reel with 7.2:1 gearing helped him try to keep up to the fish. He added a 100-milimeter handle for extra cranking power and speed. While he locked the drag on the hookset, if a fish chose to dig hard, he’d free spool and work the fish back to the boat.

Omori’s Ace Back

Having fished the Carolina rig in Japan before coming to America, Omori was right at home needing to throw it for his first two Bassmaster events at Sam Rayburn and Lake Guntersville, catching every fish on a pumpkin-colored Zoom Lizard with a chartreuse tail.

Today, it’s one of his confidence techniques because he can feel bottom way better than with a football jig or deep crankbait. It played a part in his 2016 win at Lake Wheeler where he fished a rig around shell beds in 5 feet of water. It also was key to his 7th-place finish at the Mississippi River.

The Carolina rig isn't always his first option, but he'll usually comb an area with it after trying a deep crankbait or jig.

Omori’s version of the rig utilizes 1 1/2 ounces of lead on the rig 90 percent of the time, citing its casting distance and faster sink rate, which gives him better bottom contact. He’s most often looking for a hard bottom and hoping to feel shell beds, gravel or rocks.

“With a Carolina rig, I can feel that sweet spot all the time because if I throw over the sweet spot or it's coming through the mud, I can pick up my bait really quick and cast back to where I think it’s hard bottom,” he said.

On grass lakes such as Sam Rayburn, Toledo Bend, or Lake Fork that are surrounded by milfoil and hydrilla, he’ll look for openings on the flats and throw. He’ll use his electronics to look for an outside or inside edge or openings in the outer edge. He’ll park his boat in the grass and bring his rig from open water into the edge of the grass in an opening where they feed.

Rarely will his leader length exceed 2 feet and he never uses a bead, believing they have cut his line at the knot.

Fished on a 7-foot, 4-inch Daiwa Tatula heavy-action pitching/flipping rod and Daiwa Zillion SV TW casting reel with 9:1 gearing spooled with 20-pound Sunline Super FC Sniper, he’ll rig up a Gamakatsu EWG 4/0 Superline hook, the same one he uses for flipping and pitching. He’ll either fish a 5-inch Gary Yamamoto Custom Baits Senko (green-pumpkin) or a regular sized Zoom Brush Hog (green-pumpkin) and he’ll drag bottom with the rod tip down. He’ll take the slack out and move the rod trip to drag the bait.