5 Keys To Mastering The Alabama Rig

hey everybody hope you're all doing good today out here in the taco room getting ready to start on today's tip and um hey if you hear some loud noise while i'm doing this tip it's the ice melting off of these trees here in southwest missouri we had a you know about an average ice storm here a couple days ago it's mountain today and it's just it's the ice is just coming down everywhere it's pretty loud right now so if you hear that but hey before we get started today just a couple of housekeeping housekeeping tips i just wanted to make a reminder again uh johnny and i have our fish the moment um advanced jerkbait seminar coming up this thursday from six to nine pm uh you can go on fishthemoment.com sign up for that it's going to be a course in jerkbait fishing we're going to go over everything as far as you know wintertime jerkbait fishing tree spawn it's going to be a really good deal um also we're starting up our spring lake map breakdown so we're starting to put some of those up too you might want to check out too but anyway today's topic what we're going to be talking about is uh one of my least favorite uh ways to fish yet it's one of the most productive ways that i've ever caught fish in the wintertime and i do use it a lot when i'm fishing for fun we can't use it much in tournaments anymore because a lot of the tournaments abandon and that's the alabama rig the alabama rig is a staple of the wintertime bass fishing arsenal around much of the country particularly here in southwest missouri along with the jerk bait and spoons and that type of stuff from about now until the water temperature starts to work to reach 60 degrees that's when the alabama raid shines and it's a bait that i think a lot of people don't fully understand as far as how effective it is in a lot of different water temperature ranges because some of the the biggest bags of bass that get caught on an alabama rig are later in the spring when people stop throwing it it's getting close to the spawn fish are moving shallow and a lot of people just quit throwing the thing but there's always a late group of pre-spawners are out and they can really fall victim to the alabama rig but for the most part um when i talk about alabama rigs you know i'm always thinking jerkbait at the same time and the one thing that i found out about an alabama rig that we're going to talk in detail about here in this in this video is that the alabama rig will produce bigger fish than a jerkbait the jerkbait will produce more fish the jerk bait will produce fish under a wider range of weather conditions and the alabama rig tends to work better on days where it's a little bit nastier a little bit cloudier windier south wind that type of stuff when those fish are more active and aggressive they'll hit an alabama rig but what i want to do today is i want to go through and give you a detailed breakdown of how i fish them and how i set them up and everything and what to look for first of all let's talk about blades versus knot blades um here you have a bladed alabama rig which most people throw i mean any more that's what you see more than anything and then you have the uh the version that that doesn't get thrown much anymore this is a megabass spark rig alabama rig made by megabass most people don't throw the non one anymore but this this is the one that was the traditional beginning of the of the alabama rig without the spinners a lot of people have gotten where they throw the spinners all the time it's just sort of their gate go-to deal a lot of people throw that flash mob junior that's like one of the most popular ones in the market because they're accessible blades but one of the things i want to tell you is don't get locked in onto the alabama with rigs with blades all the time because a lot of times if you're fishing a situation where the water visibility let's say greater than like three and a half or four feet you don't have a lot of wind um the fish are a little bit spooky maybe you got maybe the fronts come through a lot of times they're going to hit the the alabama rig without the spinners on it it's a little bit more subtle profile doesn't it doesn't draw as much attention to itself just a little bit more less intrusive coming through the water column so the times that i like to throw the blades are when those bass are really aggressive when you got higher winds cloud conditions fish are just more aggressive they'll throw the bladed model and i'll throw the uh the non-bladed model when it's a little bit tougher now added to that you have profile of alabama rigs a lot of different profiles up there and one of the things that you found is like years ago when alabama roots first came out everybody used these big giant profile ones and this is like a medium when they come even bigger than this that was the standard set up on there they fished the big paddle tail swim baits big giant alabama rigs but what happened after the first year or so that those were really effective and then the bass got conditioned to them they got got off a little bit and what you've seen now is you've seen a trend towards a smaller profile alabama rig and these are the ones i prefer to throw myself for example this is a this is a desert rig right here this is a two hooked rig this is the one i use at lake mead when i'm fishing out there quite a bit smaller profile got the blades on this one and then megabass also makes this finesse uh sparkler sparkler egg this is a four hook model and i catch a ton of fish on this one like a table rock you can see that the difference here's the standard mega bass one and here's the finesse model the junior and this is actually my go-to deal here when i'm fishing an alabama rig in the middle of the winter when it's really cold like it is right now i want a finesse alabama rig what i'm doing is i'm taking this little finessie alabama rig and i'm usually rigging it with like um i use the three inch megabass spark shad on this particular rig it's a real and i'll put all of them the same size on it a lot of times people go with a bigger center hook and we'll talk about that a little bit but when i'm using a finesse model in the middle of the winter i'm using the three inch magabas spark chad as my trailer usually the mega bass eighth ounce okay jig head on it set up on like that thrown it on 17 to 20 pound test seaguar physics line mega bass alkalis flipping stick because my setup that i use on that that's what i use on all the alabama rigs is that as a flipping stick i use the megabass alkali flipping stick for it like i said 17 to 25 pound test line also when you're talking about line on alabama rigs a lot of people like braided line and when it first started out people threw braided line a lot but you'll find you get a lot more bites on alabama rig with fluorocarbon the go-to deal now even for a lot of the really good alabama rig fishermen are selling 20 to 25 pound test fluorocarbon it's a little bit less obtrusive it's a little it gives you a little bit more give on it i just like the feel of it a lot better with that so those are the the two main differences on this the blades versus the knot blades the larger profile alabama rigs versus the more smaller ones so now we'll talk about baits a little bit there's three different sizes of baits i use on it and it depends on the type of alabama rig i'm throwing and it depends on the type of fish i'm fishing for um the three that i use are the the i used the mega bass spark shads this is the five inch model right here the big one this is the four inch model and the three and the three inch model with it so you got these three setups like this three sizes on there now i i change and i vary these up based upon a lot of different variables like i said time of the day when weather condition type of lake i'm fishing for if the lake has predominant largemouth smallmouth spotted bass all that type of stuff here again i want to go through my favorite setups my favorite setup to use on all of them like i said we'll start out again is the finesse alabama rig with the three-inch spark shad if i'm fishing a lake that um just like an average alabama rig set up where you're fishing off main lake points just an average fishery that type of stuff i like to go uh you know with the bladed setup and the four inch uh megabass spark shad on all the way around i i prefer on this set up to use the same size all the way around but if i'm fishing like a big fish lake uh in the late pre-spawn when i'm expecting to catch big ones like say for example i'm fishing a lake like one of the tva lakes chickamauga guttersville that type of stuff or it's known for big fish in that situation that's where i go to the big alabama rig you know bladed blade or not blade it didn't really matter i'll put four uh of this four inch spark shads on it and then i'll add the five inch one the big one on the very end is the teaser so most of the time you're going to get this fish on the big five inch spark shadow the big swim bait that you're using on there but a lot of people when they set up their alabama rigs they they always put a bigger one on the center hook and the only time that i found out that i that that works really good for me is if i'm fishing a big bass fishery where there's a lot of big bad bass in it one of the things i've noticed if you're fishing a lake that's tough or if you're fishing a lake that has a lot of spotted bass in it like we around here in missouri you know all of our white river chain lake stockton lake lake the ozarks all that type of stuff these lakes that have a lot of spotted bass that i catch a lot more fish going with the same size swim bait in the smaller version along the same size one of the things i'll do with the you know i'm using all the shad type colors is i'll put some maybe chartreuse dye on the tail a lot of times on one of them sometimes that'll you know trigger that fish to bite and you'll get a little bit more on that but anyway that's that's the basic setup that i use basic recap i'll let's go over one more time when you're talking about a bladed uh bladed alabama rig versus a non-bladed alabama rig use the blades when the fish are really aggressive um wind clouds that type of stuff tough conditions go to the alabama rig without the blades on it bright sunny bright sunny days with not much wind if you have a lake that has a lot of spotted bass in it and the fish is really tough downsized to the smaller sizes downsized to these these uh finesse type alabama rigs with the smaller size where you can throw the three inch swim baits on it and it'll add up to a lot more fish but anyway that's my alabama rug set alabama rig set up like i said it's it's not one of my favorite baits to fish i love to fish it for fun you know but i don't like the reason i don't like to fish in alabama rigging tournaments is because if you're fishing a tournament like i'm johnny schultz and i are going to be fishing some buddy terms together this year if you're fishing a tournament like a buddy circuit where alabama rigs are legal and they're biting an alabama rig you might as well put all your other stuff in the box because somebody's going to win that tournament on the alabama rig alabama rigs produce big fish they produce winning bags of fish but they're inconsistent you'll have 50 guys throwing an alabama rig and there may be two or three guys catch them on it and everybody else is struggling so it's one of those baits it's situational it's an excellent it's a tool like anything else produces a big fish you have to know when and where to throw it under what condition anyway that's today's tip um thanks you guys thanks for tuning in to me uh like i said appreciate subscribing to the channel if you like this video please hit that like button that means a lot as far as the algorithm on youtube and i think right now i've got um 60 of the people that watch my videos are not subscribed to the channel so i'd invite everybody that's not subscribing to subscribe that would help out a lot too so anyway appreciate it hope you guys have a good day we'll be back soon with another tip

Channel: Intuitive Angling With Randy Blaukat

Views: 19,868

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Id: a_ILdC_i_9s

Length: 12min 28sec (748 seconds)

Published: Sun Jan 03 2021