Thinking about trying a different carolina rig set up. I've noticed lately that I've been missing some fish on the carolina rig, I've come to realize there are teeth marks on my weight. I'm thinking about tying on a 3/4 oz football head without a trailer to sub for the weight with a palomar knot and leaving about a foot of tag to act as my leader. Any thoughts or has anyone tried anything similar.

seems to me that it would get hung up a lot, if theyre hitting your sinker why not just throw the jig alone first an see what happens???

I've done this with limited success, caught plenty of fish on the business end of it, but few on the jig.  The most difficult part was rigging it so the line passed through the jig's eye without it or the swivel/leader betting wrapped around the jigs hook.  If you're feeling fish and coming up empty on the hook-set with your C-rig. grab a jig or Texas rig. Some things are good the way they are and don't need modification.  BTW, that's the voice of experience talking.

I feel like you'd pick up a bunch of crap off the bottom, by I don't fish C rigs much. By all means try it and see if it works for you.

Try it.

I've heard of people doing this with c-rigs and drop shots. It will catch fish, but the general consensus is "lose twice the baits twice as fast"

Are you setting the hook with a side hook set?  I have fished with many that fish the C-rig and set the hook with a up-ward hook set, they are picking up the weight first and reducing the hook set. Just a thought!

Teeth marks on your weight!

Tom

I've done this with limited success, caught plenty of fish on the business end of it, but few on the jig.  The most difficult part was rigging it so the line passed through the jig's eye without it or the swivel/leader betting wrapped around the jigs hook.  If you're feeling fish and coming up empty on the hook-set with your C-rig. grab a jig or Texas rig. Some things are good the way they are and don't need modification.  BTW, that's the voice of experience talking.

x2

A decade or so ago, BPS marketed a "Missouri Rig" based on a rig that was having some success on Table Rock Lake, and to a lesser extent on the other lakes in that chain.

 

Basically the rig was a half ounce football head jig with a brush guard.  Coming out from underneath the hook on the jig head and extending to 6"or so behind the curve of the hook there was a light wire leader. 

The notion was that you  would put some soft plastic on the football jig - most often a large lizard or choppers type bait.  Then a foot to foot and a half fluorocarbon leader would be tied to the light wire leader and some other soft plastic would be tx-rigged to that.   Most often, a Zoom trick worm was used.

 

This rig came out shortly after In-fisherman magazine came out with a lengthy article extolling the virtues of the football jig for fishing/feeling bottom structures, mostly hard bottomed lakes were referred to.

 

So, the idea has some merit.   I bought some, but never got in a situation where it made sense to use that bait.   The clay/ weedy brushy bottomed lakes I was fishing then didn't easily lend themselves to crawling a football jig.   My advice would be to try it and see.

 

That is just one application that I've seem marketed,  I'm sure that there have been others that have been brought to market as well as many others that have been tried experimentally.

My best advice would be to experiment for yourself and find out.

 

That is how the A-rig was invented, some guy trying to figure out how better to catch suspended fish.

Dragging a jig along the bottom as a C-rig weight sounds reasonable until you factor in strike detection, trying to decifer what is structure bumping or resistance on the weight or a bass on a long line. If you hook set with every bump or resistance as you should do with jigs, the added soft plastic behind the jig adding another resistance feed back, you are going to be busy retrying rigs.

My suggestion is this; try a finesse C-rig using a black painted brass Pro-Jo cylinder weight, less resistance and slides along the bottom easier than a egg type sinker, resulting in better strike detection.

Mexican bass tend to have sharper and longer teeth then our northern bass. Having caught a lot of bass using painted and unpainted plain lead weights in Mexico and locally without ever noticing teeth marks on sinkers or jigs, I believe you may be mistaking rock scraps for teeth marks.

Tom