Not Sure If It Was A Split Shot Or A Carolina Rig But...

[Brian11719]

Was looking into a few new techniques to try with a new Adrena spinning rod I picked up and one of the ones I landed on was a fluke style bait with a small 1/8oz cylinder weight pegged about 20" up from the hook. The weight was not a standard circle split shot weight and I used a 'carolina keeper' from bass pro shops so I'll probably call this one the 'mini carolina rig'. Whatever it was, it was very effective. A couple of things that I think helped:

1. At first I didn't have anything between the weight and the hook so what ended up happening was the weight would just slide down the line to the hook like a standard bullet weight would and stay there...that didn't give me the action I wanted so I put a small bobber stopper under the weight to keep it in place. Next time I'll probably put the carolina keeper under the weight instead (so between the weight and the hook and just use the bobber stopper on top to keep it from going too far up the line.
2. Glenn actually mentioned the carolina rig in his video from a few days ago here (thanks man). I didn't bother with a tungsten weight because I'm going to be throwing this mostly around grass (and I spent more than I probably should have on rods a week or two ago) but one of the other things he suggests is to use 'floating baits'. In my case I bought some strike king baby z too jerkbaits in green pumpkin since there are a bunch of bluegill around this pond.
3. Definitely a different sort of feel on the bite when you get one on this thing...kind of like it just gets stuck really hard in grass and you don't feel them hit the lure as much so I was setting the hook pretty hard when I thought I might have had something...in fact my second catch was a total dink and poor guy went airborne on me when I set the hook on him 🤣

 

Anyway it was really cold today and I only had an hour or so before work by the time it wasn't freezing outside and I made it to the pond. Considering that and the fact that we just had a cold front come through and there wasn't a cloud in the sky I'd say this thing was awesome and I think it will do really well around grassy ponds this time of year. Used a 1/0 ewg hook so just that hook, the leader, the carolina keeper, one small cylinder weight and the bobber stopper for this setup (plus whatever lure you want to use). I also tried an alive shad since I use those on a drop shot but I think I like the action on elaztec baits for this setup and will stick to those. I also was lazy and just used a flourocarbon leader but the elaztec bait seemed to float well anyway and it had a really cool action where it almost looked like you would expect a weightless fluke to look right below the surface but in this case it would hover about a food above the bottom instead which seems perfect for times when they are further down in the water column...

What about you? Have you ever thrown a rig like this? If so what kind of plastic did you use and how did it do??

[WRB]

It was a “slip shot “ rig👍

Tom