Advanced Tactics for the Best Catfish Rig

[Music] hey folks i'm peter melhorn in this video i'm gonna go over some advanced techniques for using one of the best catfish rigs that there is the sand santee rig [Music] well folks if you're not familiar with the sand tea rig it got its name from the legendary lakes in the low country of south carolina known as santee cooper they are two giant massive lakes that were built right before world war ii and uh they are known worldwide as the mecca for catching catfish now these lakes are massive lakes miles across eight nine miles across at some point and one of the more popular techniques there was to drift across the lakes basically using the wind and this lake gets a lot of wind built up on it to pull boats across the lake what they needed was a rig that could go along the bottom keep the hook from getting snagged on something on the bottom and be able to bounce over structure limbs rocks that type of thing what they developed was something somewhat similar to the carolina rig but instead of having a movable weight it was attached to the swivel and the connection that went to the leader line on that leader there was a cork a float that would float your bait and your hook up off of the bottom so it didn't get drug through the mud and also to gets didn't get snagged on anything on the bottom now the rig itself is really ridiculously simple all you need is your main line it's attached to a snap swivel the snap swivel ties onto your leader at the end of your leader as a hook but on the line the thing that makes it kind of different is a cork a float something to float that bait up for years the most popular way to do it was with a peg float a inch and a half to three inch peg float but what we're gonna go over are some of the more advanced techniques and things you can add to tweak and make this rig even better than it already is now one of the first things we started doing many years ago was adding rattles to the cork uh back in the day we were adding worm rattles these were little glass rattles they're basically an enclosed little glass tube that had metal beads in it bass fishermen use them and they're the guys who made them popular they would take these and put them inside rubber worms inside different plastic soft plastic baits and it would add a little bit of noise and vibration what we ended up doing was taking these rattles and replacing the peg in the float the court or just putting them inside that same hole it had a little bit of noise it had a little bit of vibration and it was a very cheap and what we thought was an effective tool for maybe inciting a little bit of a bite and creating a little bit of noise to create some more excitement now since then they've come out with some better options the folks at hookers terminal tackle sell what they call in-line rattles which are basically two little plastic cylinders that hold a rattling ball your line goes through it and you can put it on the line adjacent to your float some people put it up toward the hook i suggest you keep it behind the float so that it does not interfere with your hook setup it offers some noise as it goes through the water and as it tumbles and also at hook set when the fish takes the bait it can cause some rattling and make some noise some people put one some people put two some people put several of them but any way you look at it the inline rattles from hookers terminal tackle is one way that you can soup up your santee rig now as these rattles became more popular some folks realized that they could take top water lures uh bass lures that float on top of the water these lures are designed not to sink not to go deep in the water and a lot of them like the zara spook have little balls inside of them that rattle and make noise people started putting these onto that santee rig to replace the cork float the demon dragon became a popular brand name and has kind of become the kleenex of the uh rattling lures in the catfish world name uh but they're all pretty much the same they're a zero spook style blank that you can paint up to look like a fish you can paint it a solid color like a cork but it basically takes the place of not only the floating action on the santee rig but also add some noise and it can add a visual look that some people think may work to attract fish now the way these rigs were originally designed was so that the sinker was fixed in place by the snap but there's a little trick that you can do to turn this into a carolina rig by adding a sinker slide now you're probably wondering what is the advantage for doing this well one some people believe that maybe the pulling uh that line being able to pull free may help with the bite for me what i think the biggest advantage for doing this is is in case you decide to go anchor up somewhere and you want something that's similar to a carolina rig and you don't want to re-tie a bunch of stuff you can take your santee rig put a sinker slide onto the line take your court slide it up towards the swivel and you've got basically a carolina rig there that's if you want your bait laying on the bottom now some people want the bait floating up off the bottom in that case you'd leave your cork slid further down the line the one bad part to doing this is if you are not in current or someplace where you can keep your lines tight say you're on a lake anchored up and you've got some boat sway going on that cork will float it up through the water column to different heights because the sinker slide is not locking it in place that may be good that may be bad but it's something that you need to keep in mind if you decide to put a sinker slide on there and allow the cork to be further up the line now one of the other big variables on a cnt rig is the length of liter the length of that leader determines how far off the bottom your baits are floating generally for me i am having my leader length about 18 to 24 inches and i've got my cork about two-thirds up the line from the sinker now depending on the conditions what's going on with the fish you can increase the length of that leader line i've seen some people do it three or four feet to suspend these baits way up off of the bottom now is there an advantage to doing this probably in some cases depending on where the fish are sometimes it can be a bigger advantage than suspending them underneath floats as you are drifting through the water a lot of people feel that the hook-up ratio is better on the santee rig than it is on having a suspended bait underneath a bobber or underneath the planer board that's for you to decide on your style of fishing and how it works but it is an option and a big variable there on the leader length that's something that i get a lot of questions about again for me 18 to 24 inches seems to work just fine but you can adjust that for your style of fishing now one thing i'm going to touch on with the sandy rig because i get this question a lot on my guide trips and that is how far i put the lines out the sand rig behind the boat a lot of people are kind of shocked when they get on the boat and they see that the line is not straight underneath the boat it's not going straight down it's way out there 75 100 125 feet what i believe is that that less angle going out through there versus going straight down helps with the hook setup when a fish takes that bait what i'm getting as if that line is straight down underneath the boat and the fish go side to side i feel like you don't have as much resistance for that circle hook as you do at a longer angle with that boat moving so that's my theory on it it does come into play some people wonder about um whether it's because fish are scared of the boat i really don't think in deeper water that matters perhaps in shallower water when you're in five six seven feet of water and you're drifting through it it may play a part i don't think it really matters out there in 15 20 30 50 feet of water uh the angle of the lines for me seems to be a better hook up ratio when they're out behind the boat so when you look at my videos and you see where those lines are keep that in mind there are good ways out behind the boat one last note on the santee rigs i snell my hooks onto the rig i use that i like keeping them in line and that seems to give me a better hook up on the other end i am just using a regular improved clinch knot uh you can use whatever you want to on those other ends palomar knots whatever is most convenient for you to tie uh i'm using what works for me any of these knots are going to work guys don't get too bent out of shape and worry about the knot the knot doesn't catch the fish putting the bait in front of the fish in the right place at the right time is what gives you the opportunity to catch fish well folks if you made it this far thank you for watching here are a couple more videos that i think you're gonna like i'd watch that one and then that one no no do do that one first and then that one i don't just watch them both they're both [Music] good

Channel: Dieter Melhorn Fishing

Views: 18,650

Rating: 4.9608936 out of 5

Keywords: Tactics for the Best Catfish Rig, dieter melhorn, best catfish rig, best catfishing rig, Santee rig, good catfish rig, best rig for catfish, Catfish rig rattles, catfish rig, demon dragons, best catfishing rigs, how to catch catfish, fishing for catfish, catfishing, catfish, fishing for blue catfish, rigs for catfishing, rigs for catching catfish, catfish rigs for lake fishing, catfish rigs for bank fishing, catfish rig setup, catfish rig with bobber, Demon dragon

Id: y-jMbb6GH60

Length: 10min 2sec (602 seconds)

Published: Tue Sep 01 2020