There we go. He did. That's not a bad little fish here. Not a bad fish, on tube. Come here you. Here we go.
You know, it's a little fish but boy they sure are fun. Fell victim to my splitshot tube. That's what we're doing today. I'm going to show you how to fish that, show you the different equipment to use, and then I'm gonna take you on the water and show you the different techniques you can use for fishing a splitshot tube.
Hey folks. Glenn May here with BassResource.com. Today I'm gonna to talk to you about mojo rigging a tube bait. A split shotttin the tube bait. All that really is, is a cylindrical tube . . . a cylindrical weight, about 18 inches past it, is the tube. And if you don't know how to rig this, I've got a video on how to rig tube baits, and it's linked underneath this video. Go check it out and it'll show you how to rig it. But today we're gonna to talk about the equipment that we're gonna to use, the tackle, and then I'm gonna to show you how to fish it.
So starting off here, I'm using a . . . this is a hook designed specifically for tubes. It's a high performance hook. I think it's a Shaw Grigsby high performance hook. I think Eagle Claw makes it. This is just simply a 1/0 or a 2/0 . . . I think it's a 1/0 hook. Thin wire hook. Light wire application here. And we've got this about 18 inches above the weight so it can flow freely, it can come up off the bottom, float back down naturally, uninhibited by the line. Six pound line.
The weight here, this is about a quarter ounce weight. You can use a . . . I think an eighth ounce is a real good starting point. We're gonna fish a little bit deeper with this, so I'm using a quarter ounce. You can use three-eighth ounce if you want. I go all the way up to half ounce, even one ounce weights, but that's for specialty situations. That's for when I'm fishing heavy current. I've got to get this bait to flow through the water column before it flies by me on the cast, so I'm using a much heavier weight in those instances.
But because we're using real light line, real thin hook, you gotta have a rod that matches that, so we're using a medium-light action rod today. This is a spinning outfit to handle that line. Medium-light action rod. If you use a heavier rod, then you risk breaking the line or straightening out that hook during the hookset, and when you're fighting the fish back to the boat. So medium-light action is what you want. It's got that rod tip action, a lot of give to it, so you can fight the fish without causing any problems.
All right, so that's the equipment we're gonna use, now let's go out and fish it.
All right, so what I'm fishing here is an area that's got rocky bottom, with some weeds in it. And it's not a whole lot of weeds. It's not thick, but it's mostly rocky. Great place to be fishing the split shot rig, because the weight is a cylindrical weight. It's gonna slide through those rocks and not get hung up as easy as, say, other shaped weights. And it also slides through the weeds as well.
The tube, obviously, is Texas rig, so it's not gonna to get hung as much either. So it's a great setup to use in a situation like this.
All you gonna do, is gonna cast it out there. When you cast it, we're not trying to win any distance competitions here, so don't try to throw it as hard as you can. As a matter of fact, if you do that, the weight, and the bait, they're gonna tumble in mid-air like this, and they're gonna get all tangled up before they even hit the water, and that's gonna ruin your presentation anyway. So no sense in trying to throw it really hard. Instead, just bring it back, let the weight and the bait settle down a little bit behind you, and then it's a lob cast. Real nice and easy lob cast. Let the rod tip do the work for you. If you've ever thrown a Carolina rig, you know exactly what I'm talking about.
So all you do, once it hits the water, is you wanna watch that line. Watch it carefully. Let it fall on slack line, just flip the bail over, and watch where the line enters the water. Because a lot of times the fish hit it while it's falling. And the only way you're gonna know that they bit it, is if you see the line twitch, pop, jerk, do something unusual. Might swim off to one side or the other. If you see that, reel up the slack, and set the hook.
And speaking of setting the hook, you don't have to set the hook really hard with this setup. You've got real light line, medium-light action rod, with a thin wire hook. If you set it really hard like that, you're likely to break the line, or straighten out that hook, which you'll lose the fish if you do that. So just a light set, it's a moderate hookset. Just pop it a little bit. That's all it takes. Doesn't take much to get that light wire hook to penetrate past the barb into the fish's mouth. Some people just reel down a lot harder, or they'll move the rod tip like this, and that's it. It's a sweep set. Doesn't take a whole lot. So keep that in mind when you set the hook.
So we're just gonna cast this out here, and I'm gonna watch that line. Got the reel . . . the bail flipped, watching that line where it falls. Watching it fall, watching it fall. Okay, it hit the bottom. Now how I know I hit the bottom, is that the line just went slack and stopped moving.
So next thing I'm gonna do, is I'm just gonna lift the weight up off the bottom, and then bring it back down. I want the bait to . . . the weight to fall straight down. But I wanna maintain contact with it in case the fish bites. So the way you do that, is you bring the rod tip down about the same speed as the weight falling, while reeling up the slack. And when you do that, in case the fish bites the lure, you're gonna feel that strike. So it takes a little bit of practice to do it. You lift it up, and then just let it fall. Straight down. Just like that. And let that tube just kinda flutter.
Now in this situation, the tube, it doesn't spiral downward, like you would if it was on a jig head. But it kinda does this: back and forth. So it looks like a dying bait fish. That's why you get so many bites on this setup. Just lift it up, and now we're gonna let it fall straight down.
Now how fast you drop it, obviously, depends on how heavy the weight is. How fast do you lift it up? I generally like to do it slowly, not pop it. But really, you have to play with it each day, and figure out what it is the fish wants. Sometimes they want it moving fast. You want to just reel it back in, drop . . . lift, drop, lift, drop. Other times, you're gonna have to sit there and wait. They only will hit it when it isn't moving. You'll get their attention when you bring it up, but they'll follow it, and they'll look at it, until they can't stand it anymore. Then they'll grab it. So sometimes you have to wait really long. You just gonna have to play with it every day, and figure out, each day, what they want.
All right, so the next retrieve I'm gonna show you, is we're just gonna . . . a lot of times this bait, it looks like, either like a bait fish, or a sculpin feeding on the bottom. Or maybe even a crawdad. So this next retrieve is what we're gonna use to imitate that. Let it fall all the way to the bottom, like it did before, but now all we're gonna do, is we're just gonna drag the weight, with the rod, on the bottom, and then reel up the slack. Point the rod right at it, and just move it with the rod tip. Keeping it on the bottom. We want it to look like one of those bait fishes, or a crawdad crawling on the bottom. So you don't move it with the reel. And keep that rod tip down so that you're ready to set the hook.
Now a derivative of this, another way to fish it, is to throw it out back. You only can do this if you're in a boat, but I like to throw it out towards the back of the boat. Let it fall. I give it a little bit of extra line here. I give it maybe 10-15 feet of line. And then in this case, I'm just gonna let the boat move the bait. Okay, I'm just gonna set the trolling motor, like on 20, 30, somewhere in there. And I'm just gonna drag it along the bottom of the lake.
This is a great way to fish offshore structure, or in the wintertime, this is almost exclusively how I fish it. And I just vary the speed using my trolling motor. Keep the rod tip down. You're ready to set the hook. You can also feel the bite a lot better that way too. It can get boring sometimes, but boy, you can load the boat doing it this way too.
Speaking of which, now, in the wintertime and in the summertime, like I said, I like to fish it this way. That's because the bulk of the fish during those times of the year are out in the main lake. So during those times of the year, I'm gonna fish main lake points, rock piles, offshore humps, ledges, creek channels. Places where the creek bend is right near the shoreline. Those are the type of structures that I'm gonna target during those times of the year. I'm just gonna fish a little bit slower in the wintertime than I do in the summer. In the fall and in the spring, that's when the fish are up shallow. So during those times of the year, I'm gonna be going to the back of creek coves, back of coves. I'm gonna be fishing protected bays. Big flats. I like grassy flats. That's a great area to fish during the springtime.
I'm just gonna fish those areas, again, using the same retrieves that I just showed you. With this tube, I'm telling you what, if you do those things and fish at those locations during those times of the year, you're gonna catch a lot of fish, and you're gonna have a whole heck of a lot of fun.
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