Elite pro John Crews breaks down his complete Carolina rig setup, including weights, leader length, line selection, and the best baits to use. He also shares key tips for fishing current, reducing snags, and maximizing your efficiency when covering water. If you want to find and catch more bass in deep water this summer, the Carolina rig is a must-have technique. 

Man I hate a C-rig, but I really need to get better at it. I'd probably be able to be a lot more effective with it now with Livescope where I can see the structure I want to fish instead of just fan casting points. It's not a very fun way to fish but it sure does catch big ones.

Years ago, I did this far more often than I do today. Its just the prep you have to do, and the advancement of the senko type baits which I use far more than other plastics. When I did use the CR rig, I often used a big hollow tube bait, and a long leader. I stuffed the tube with some Styrofoam so it would float high above the big weight stirring up the bottom. Then Texas rig the tube right through the tube and the stuffed Styrofoam. Sitting still the tube would dance in place with just the slightest twitch of the line. When pulling the weight, the tube would dive down and then float up slowly. It was a good paring but a pain to deal with in the boat. The big weight would also often snag on limestone rock bottom, and I would have to reverse boat direction to remove the snag. This happened far too often in our deep Everglades canals.

These videos Glenn posts are invaluable - keep ‘em coming ! … I either learn something new or I am reminded of a time tested technique I make a point to re-visit from watching these bass fishing videos. The cool thing is that there are newer , improved terminal tackle that can be used making up a C-Rig such as The Carolina Keeper , various size brass or tungsten weights , more sizes of beads , swivels , brass clackers , bobber stops , improved hooks / hook coatings , more abrasion resistant FC or co-poly lines and lastly a large variety of soft plastics that allow a C- Rig to be creatively set up for any depth and situation … Often “old can become new again” as John Crews demonstrates .

Im old C rig is old. It works. Match made in heaven

Quit throwing Carolina rig years ago. Was never very good with it and not worth the trouble, I decided. But, watched this shortly after listening to Frank Scalish do a c-rig deep dive on Bass Talk Live. Decided to break it out one more time.

The past three weeks, 90% of my bass over 4# have all come on the old ball and chain. Have come to love it.

The first time I saw the Ned rig it wasn’t called that. Stacy King cut down a stick bait to about three inches and put it on a light mushroom jig head. He fished it on 6lb line. The spots ate it up. Who would of thunk it.

4 hours ago, Columbia Craw said:

The first time I saw the Ned rig it wasn’t called that. Stacy King cut down a stick bait to about three inches and put it on a light mushroom jig head. He fished it on 6lb line. The spots ate it up. Who would of thunk it.

That's because that was probably after Ned Kehde popularized it. If you read further, I believe Kansas bass anglers in the 50's actually created it. Now people put all kinds of plastics on ned heads and call them "ned rigs" which they are not. There is only one ned rig; anything else is simply a finesse plastic on a ned head or some variant.