Too simple right? Well, like most things in life the simplest is often the best. And believe it or not you can adjust this rig to fit probably a wider range of conditions than almost any other set up.
For weight, I use removable split shot so I can change the amount of weight rapidly. I want just the right amount of weight so my bait is drifting at the same speed as the bottom current. Most of the time my goal is to have my bait drifting about one half the speed of the surface current. The surface currents are always faster than the bottom current, well, okay, 99.9% of the time. What happens is the water rubs along the bottom creating friction and slowing the current right on the bottom. Using removable shot lets you tinker with the weight and placement so your drift is at the ideal speed. The shot bounces along the river bottom with the bait being more buoyant hopefully drifting along right above the bottom. Even the placement of the shot can alter its drift with the shot spread apart along the line you get a slightly shallower more horizontal drift than with shot placed the standard ten inches or foot up the line. While a bunch of heavier shot placed together makes the whole set up act like more of a jig. Ideally your picturing the bait in your head as it drifts along the stream and any twitch or unnatural stop means a fish.
In some shallow streams or in very slow stream sections drifting a bait on just a hook with no weight can be very effective. Try to keep just enough slack so the bait has a natural drift. A great example is when hybrid stripers are feeding in a riffle. Hooking just a shad and letting it drift helplessly down stream almost guarantees a strike if a stripe sees the bait. My uncle used this technique a lot in a small river near home, drifting chicken liver to hungry channel catfish. Usually most lowhead dams have a big slowly turning eddy at one end or the other, often both. I've found this is a great place to throw a nightcrawler on either just a plain hook or a splitshot rig and let it slowly follow the current around the eddy. You can catch almost everything that swims in the river doing this.
Ideally you should have a variety of sizes of shot with you. Even though it's a simple rig, by varying both the amount of shot and it's placement you can cover the entire water column. Just another example of, as Leonardo Da Vinci said, "Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication". If I could choose only one technique to fish with for the rest of my life it might just be this one.
Two different takes on the same basic principle of a weight dragging bottom with the bait trailing behind up off the bottom. There are literally dozens of different variations on the basic idea. I will say that two of my personal heroes in the world of fishing Dan Gapen and Al Linder have used this kind of rig for just about every fish that swims in our rivers. The idea is the weight bounces along the bottom but the bait doesn't hang up and is presented right in the fishes wheelhouse. If you troll or drift rivers chances are your best presentations are made by using some variation of this rig. And not just with live or cut bait but with lures as well. Crappie, smallmouth bass, walleye, even big bluegill are suckers for the right sized crankbait fished behind some kind of three way rig. When presenting bait your limited only by your imagination. There's an infinite amount of different sinker designs and weights to drop off the bottom. You can lengthen or shorten your leader, even add a float on your leader to lift your bait up off the bottom. And most of the terminal tackle involved is dirt cheap so you can afford to stock up on a variety to experiment with while on the water. Again if you fish rivers out of a yak, canoe, john boat or full sized boat you should be experimenting around with three way rigs regularly.
The slip sinker rig was the first rig my father taught me years ago when we he first took me fishing. It is probably the most popular way to present live or cut bait across the country. And with good reason, it's simply excellent. The idea is that you can use a heavy enough weight to get the job done in any situation but still the fish feels little or no resistance when it takes. The fish can take the bait and swim off with as the line pays out freely thru the slip sinker. Although simple like all the previous rigs it is extremely versatile. There is a huge array of sliding sinkers nowadays, you could replace the swivel with an adjustable stop like a speedo bead, and of course vary the length of leader.
Use only enough leader to let your bait attract fish without hanging up. That may mean a short six or eight inch leader if your trying for a big shovel in a logjam, A long leaders drifting for channel cats along a clean bottom or maybe even no leader trying for a monster blue in heavy current and rocks below a big dam on the Ohio. The slip sinker rig is also one of the best for light biters that might spook drop other rigs. Finding a riffle in a small river and fishing just below or above it with a nightcrawler thrown out on this rig is just about as close to a sure thing as your ever going to find in the fishing world.
If your like me you probably consider carp a worthy game fish. Study after study has shown that carp are among the most intelligent of all fish. In every study I've seen carp that have been caught once are always the hardest fish species of all to catch a second time. This seems as good a place as any to introduce what I'll call my redneck hair rig. Most of the time carp in rivers haven't been fished for and you will have constant action by fishing a doughball on a small treble behind a slip sinker rig. But some days even the most unfished for carp can be frustratingly difficult to hook. They will pick up your bait and streak off like a bat out of hell. You set the hook and nothing is there! How did they do that? It seems impossible but every carp fisherman has experienced it. In Europe where big carp are worshipped a rig known as a hair rig is employed. A small loop is trailed behind a small hook. A tiny tool that looks like a miniature knitting needle is used to attach the doughball to the loop and the small hook is left dangling free just in front of the bait. When the carp tries to expel the bait the small free hook catches in the carps mouth giving you time to set the hook. Well istead of a loop replace that with the treble you would normally use to hold your doughbait. You get the extra hooking chances of the hair rig and the insurance of a conventional treble hook.
Use only enough leader to let your bait attract fish without hanging up. That may mean a short six or eight inch leader if your trying for a big shovel in a logjam, A long leaders drifting for channel cats along a clean bottom or maybe even no leader trying for a monster blue in heavy current and rocks below a big dam on the Ohio. The slip sinker rig is also one of the best for light biters that might spook drop other rigs. Finding a riffle in a small river and fishing just below or above it with a nightcrawler thrown out on this rig is just about as close to a sure thing as your ever going to find in the fishing world.
If your like me you probably consider carp a worthy game fish. Study after study has shown that carp are among the most intelligent of all fish. In every study I've seen carp that have been caught once are always the hardest fish species of all to catch a second time. This seems as good a place as any to introduce what I'll call my redneck hair rig. Most of the time carp in rivers haven't been fished for and you will have constant action by fishing a doughball on a small treble behind a slip sinker rig. But some days even the most unfished for carp can be frustratingly difficult to hook. They will pick up your bait and streak off like a bat out of hell. You set the hook and nothing is there! How did they do that? It seems impossible but every carp fisherman has experienced it. In Europe where big carp are worshipped a rig known as a hair rig is employed. A small loop is trailed behind a small hook. A tiny tool that looks like a miniature knitting needle is used to attach the doughball to the loop and the small hook is left dangling free just in front of the bait. When the carp tries to expel the bait the small free hook catches in the carps mouth giving you time to set the hook. Well istead of a loop replace that with the treble you would normally use to hold your doughbait. You get the extra hooking chances of the hair rig and the insurance of a conventional treble hook.
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