ESOX HUNTER
Pike-seducers: Big softbaits and their rigs
By Uli Beyer January 3, 2009
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Soft Plastics Are Deadly!
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Large softbaits are one of the very-best lures for big pike! I caught dozens of large pike on these great and rather cheap baits. One important question for the efficient use is the right rigging of such lure. We have developed different styles of rigs for different presentations and sizes of the lures.
First of all we will need to supplement the large jig-hook, which holds our lure. Smaller lures are armed enough with only one single-jig-hook. 6-inch shads work rather well with only this single-hook if it is very sharp and big enough. I prefer staying with only one hook especially when I am fishing heavy cover
such as weeds and wood etc.! Most pike fisherman have learned that bigger lures, produce also bigger fish, and no other big lure is cheaper and more productive than big softbaits. Anglers who have never fished with big soft plastics are faced with two main-problems:
1. How to fix and to cast a heavy big-fish lure
2. How to get and to set an efficient rig for it
- Fix your lure and choose the right rod for it!
Big lures can be made of different hardness. Stiffer lures work rather well with just the jig-hook. The heavier material holds well to a single hook, so nothing is necessary. However, softer lures have a tendency to produce more more bites. We also prefer to use softer plastics in the colder water and for zander-fishing. Additional help is needed to hold these softer plastics to the hook. If the soft plastic is not very big (6-8 inch) one or two dots superglue on the lead-shank of jour jig-head might be enought to hold it. You will need to press and hold your softbait for a few seconds after you apply the glue. If you are intending on casting these lures, it is generally a good idea to use a piece of copper wire to fix the lure onto the hook. First you would wind some of the wire around the shank of the hook, just below the eye of the hook. Than you mount your “very-soft lure” on the hook as you do it with harder plastics. Then you pass the free end of the copper – wire below the eye through the lure and wind 4-6 times around the head. Wire needs to be wrapped snuggly, but not hard enough to cut the plastic! The end of your wire you fix once more on the eye of your hook. Soft plastics that are mounted in this fashion are securely fastened to the hook and can be casted for quite sometime. Fishing with softbaits can be done with several presentation methods: For smaller lures I don't recommend fishing with casting reels. You need to pick up slack line fast and I have found that spinning reels perform much better than casting reels. For really big lures, the weight could be too much for a spinning reel (fixed spool) and it becomes necessary to fish with a baitcaster reel. Bigger lures are often trolled or slowly retrieved, so that the reel and the the ability to pick up slack fast are not as critical as they were with smaller lures. Concerning the rods, I prefer mostly the “German Style”, which means fishing with longer rods (generally 9 feet in length). A longer rod not only allows me to cast lures further, but I also have enough arc to set the hooks at a greater distance! If you are planning on vertical fishing especially with bigger lures (jig up and down with your lure), the is better to use a shorter rod. If you are going to be trolling, rod choice is really up to you; however whatever you choose should be stiff enough to set big hooks into the hard mouth of a big pike.
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| Wound copper wire holds plastic |
Another look using wire |
- Concerning the right hook-rig
We experimented for many years in an effort to develop the perfect soft plastic hook rig. First we started with trebles, which we hooked only with the eye over the jig – hook. You can still see this system used and published in the German press. While this rig is easy to make, it really offers nothing with regard to catching fish
as number of lost fish using this rig is almost identical to the jig-hook alone. We began experimenting and studied how pike (predators) how the they grab lures. After a lot of trial and error we believe that hooks below the belly of a lure, such as wobblers have them, seemed work best! We
continued to develop these rigs with very complicated split-ring setups, which we put over the eye of the jig-hook. It became apparent that the rig was to difficult to build and the split ring ends were quickly destroyed in the midst of a hard pike-fight. Our ultimate goal was to create a simple, stable, and long lasting rig. Our result is a system, which is now standard in the shad-fishing-scene here Germany. You need only some inches of coated sevenstrand wire-leader (I prefer about 40 pounds test), to crimping sleeves, two adapted treble-hooks and crimping-pliers to fix the sleeves.
To built the rig in the right way, it´s rather important to get the right length for the lures. Please check my drawing and take the sizes out of the table below…
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| Double hook Uli Rig |
Uli's Drawing |
Reference Uli's drawing above to identify the lengths referenced in the table below.
Sizes and distances for Ulis double-hook rig on different shad-sizes
| Shad size |
Hook size |
Length 1 |
Length 2 |
Approx. leader length in total |
| 6 inch |
1-2 |
1 inch |
4 inches |
6.5 inches |
| 7 inch |
1 – 1/0 |
1.5 inches |
5 inches |
8.5 inches |
| 8 inch |
1 - 1/0 |
1.5 - 2 inches |
6 inches |
10 inches |
| 9 inch |
1/0 - 3/0 |
2 inches |
7 inches |
11.5 inches |
| 12 inch |
1/0 - 4/0 |
2 – 2.5 inches |
9 inches |
14.5 inches |
Maybe you are asking yourself why we placed a second treble directly behind the head of the lure? We found out that many fish strike the head-part of the lure/prey. I you look closely at a lot of photos you will see that many of the fish are caught on the front hook.
How to fix the rig?
If you have built your rig, the work is not yet complete. You have to fix the hooks into your lure and it is still possible that you could do something wrong during this step. To begin with you must determine if you will troll with your big shad or if you are going to cast it.
Rigging for casting
Free hanging trebles are the best, but they are often impossible to fish with casting softbaits because of frequent tangles. If you cast, fix the two trebles with tight leader into the belly. It should be tight as hooks are often pushed into the lure by a fighting fish, resulting in a lost fish. Having the snuggly fitted to the bottom of the bait fixes this problem. Don´t put your hook to deeply into the plastic, just hook only a small part of the plastic. When the hook is in the pike's mouth and pike starts shaking its head aggressively they put a lot of pressure on the hooks. There are couple of possibilities when this happens:
1. Never drive the hook too deeply into your lure.
2. When you get a bite, strike as hard as you can and keep the line very tight – pull really hard to keep the hook into the fishs mouth!
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| Casting Rig 1 |
Casting Rig 2 |
Rigging for trolling
For trolling, it´s real easy rigging as you keep the trebles free-hanging under the lure. I twist another piece of copper-wire around the eye of the treble-hooks, so that I get a small stick, which I push into the belly of my softbait. My trebles stay free – hanging under the belly and the hook-setting-rate is best!
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| A Trolling Rig |
Good luck for your next softbait-trip!
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Last updated on ...May 22, 2009