Best Catfish Rig -- Santee Cooper Catfishing Rig -- How To Tie

this is what we call the CNT Cooper rig it works great for catfishing for many reasons first of all you're using a circle hook which when used right will set the hook on itself the fish picks up the bait and the hook turns in its mouth and you usually have a nice hook set right in the lips of the fish we it also uses a peg float to suspend your bait off the bottom this is the key to the sandy Cooper rig this peg float you see here suspends the bait off the bottom that's the main premise of the Santee Cooper rigged think about a large catfish it has a large body and how can you make it easier for it to feed suspend the bait off the bottom and you're putting the bait right in his face all they have to do is open their mouth inhale the bait turn and set the hook I have also found that you get more aggressive takes when you're suspending the bait off the bottom they will hit multiple times and they will keep hitting until you have the opportunity to apply pressure so the hook sets or they set the hook on themselves at the end here we have a figure eight knot I prefer the figure eight knot to connect to my swivel because the fantastic range of function has this means your bait will move naturally in the current as well as provide minimal resistance when the fish picks up your bait because it moves around so well one of the main reasons this really is so effective is because it is designed for use with fresh chunk bait or you could also use it with some live bait and your large catfish is diet consists mostly of fish not the other things you would catch small smaller Bowl head and catfish on like night crawlers and rotting pieces of meat or chicken livers you want to be fishing large fresh bait when you're going for large catfish first start with your favorite circle hook of choice I usually use Eagle Claw trocar 7 on circle hooks I find that a 7 is a good size for fish anywhere from 4 to 20 pounds which the largest fish around here 20 pounds that is perfect for me suit the hook size to the size of the fishery target next you'll need a peg float to suspend your day off the bottom I'm using a two inch peg float I find that it suspends a three or four inch piece of chunk bait quite well if you are going with larger bait then you were going to need a larger float and obviously on the end you will need a swivel use a nice strong one because these are a strong big catfish another important thing to note is you are going to need to fish this rig with a rather heavy flat sinker you're probably going to need at least three ounces if there's any sort of current and a lot of cats or Sherman even go up to eight ounces depending on the current and then you also want a bumper bead so you don't damage your not with the heavy lead you're finished rig length is going to be around two feet so I would cut a roughly three-foot section of monofilament or fluorocarbon leader material I'm using thirty pound mono because the biggest fish around here are only about twenty pounds and I like to use the lightest line possible and this is the best balance of strength and abrasion resistance for my area you're going to want to attach the leader to the hook with either a small knot or a polymer not the snail knot is supposed to help the hook turn and seeing we are using circle hooks that is important however I find the thirty pound leader material doesn't smell as well as heavier lines so I'm going to go with a polymer not to do a polymer not fold the end of your line in half insert into the eye of the hook tie a simple overhand knot pull that loosely because now you need to send the hook back through the loop and watch them your line normally and then pull tight and that is a basic polymer knot obviously trim off the excess now measure out roughly two feet because that is the length of this rig to connect the end of the rig to the swivel we are going to be using a figure eight knot so send the end of your rig through one hole on the swivel and then we're basically going to draw a figure eight with a swivel there's a loop and then if you come back around and then back through the loop there you can see why it's called the figure eight because it looks like I figure eight pull that tight and then cut the tag end off once again I leave a little extra tag end on here because when you land a fish and it tightens down that tag moves a little bit and then usually your peg float has a large enough opening that it will slide over the scroll now if it doesn't then you would have had to put this peg foot on before you tie your swivel on either way insert any peg float and now this is also important you want to set your peg float two to four inches away from the hook you can experiment with that everybody has a different preference but that seems to be the general consensus you need enough room for the fish's mouth - not just latch onto the peg flow you don't want too long because then your bait is just going even if it's floating it's just going to sit on the bottom like that so you don't want that I usually go with about two or three inches set your peg float and that is it a simple and super effective sandy Cooper rig

Channel: Fishing Explained

Views: 491,647

Rating: 4.8229189 out of 5

Keywords: best catfishing rig, santee cooper catfishing, santee cooper rig, how to catch catfish, catfish rig, how to make a catfish rig, catfishing rig, how to tie catfishing rig, santee cooper, catfishing, catfishing videos, channel catfish, best channel catfish rig, how to tie a catfish rig, fishing hacks, catfishing tips

Id: EEXmIYFDQXM

Length: 6min 51sec (411 seconds)

Published: Mon May 29 2017