Tweaking the Alabama Rig

I got trendy and picked up an Alabama rig a couple nights ago after laying in bed trying to figure out how I could apply it to a shallow natural lake like Lake Okeechobee; it probably didn’t hurt that there’s been a shad spawn going on and I’ve been seeing bait busting left and right.  Ironically, this is one of the few bedtime fantasies that I’ve had that’s actually worked out. 

I picked up a generic Alabama rig without jig-heads included – to be honest I don’t even know what brand the thing was (all I remember is that it was the cheapest one I could find ~$14).  Being well equipped to fish swimbaits I have a ton of Owner Twist-Lock hooks laying around.  I took four 5/0 Twist-Lock hooks and mounted them on the corner swivel snaps.

 

I then set it up just as I would rig up a single hook to toss a swimbait in the grass: I threaded on four Gambler EZ Swimmers and buried the hooks.  I decided against skin hooking the baits simply because they would be getting jostled so much during casts that I would end up re-setting them every time not to mention burning thru a lot more plastic than I would like.  The version of the Alabama rig I picked up had a fifth swivel snap in the center  - I popped a gold #5 spinnerbait blade with a barrel swivel on that one figuring the fish would focus on the baits “straggling” on the edges and the blade would add some flash and sound.  

You can see the results in the images.  On 50# Power Pro using a medium retrieve (pretty synonymous with fishing a spinnerbait) the rig runs 6” to a foot below the surface – running Big EZ’s in place of EZ Swimmers would probably get you down around 1 ½  to 2 feet.  Also noteworthy is how clean it came thru the grass.  I worked it around and thru isolated Kissimmee Grass and bulrush clumps without hanging it once – and I definitely wasn’t conservative with where I put it.  

In regards to the night fantasy come to fruition: I fished it in the morning for ~an hour and a half on a main lake flat that usually holds schoolies as well as some bigger fish; had one bite and 2 follows (kind of sounds like musky fishing) – the one bite was 7lbs.  Whether it’s a fluke or not, the rig looked pretty gnarly in the water when you mixed a few twitches in.  It’s definitely a mod to try if you’re stuck in the “shallow water experience” with a decent shad population.