Rig soft plastics weedless

From OKFC Wiki

How to rig soft plastic lures weedless Soft plastics are one of the best ways to fish the shallow flats of our estuaries and work on essentially all predator fish including trout, snook, redfish, black drum, and tarpon. Here’s how you can rig these so that there’s a minimal chance that they will snag sea grass but remain effective to catch fish. The pictures following below illustrate a hook and a soft plastic, when you do this you will want to ensure that the hook is already tied to your line. Tie a loop knot so that the lure can move freely.

First, it’s important that you choose the right hook size to match your lure. Check in the picture below and note that the gap of the hook from shank to hook tip is too narrow, and if a fish bites there won’t be enough hook exposed to snag the fish.

In contrast check the picture below. You’ll notice that the gap is sufficient for the width of this soft plastic. Anything attempting to swallow this will certainly have the hook point penetrate. The first step to rig weedless is to line the hook in the manner to ensure a wide enough gap and to determine where to push the hook point through

Step 2 is to push the hook through the tip of the soft plastic like the following.

Continue to pull the hook most of the way through as you see in the picture below

You want to now continue the hook until the eye of the hook is covered by the tip of the soft plastic lure and then twist the hook so that the hook point is ready to go through the body of the soft plastic lure like below.

Now put the hook point through the soft plastic, and ensure that the soft plastic is straight. If you have done this successfully the hook will penetrate the lure twice: through the tip and through the middle just like below.

You’re almost done, but the next step is critical to make your rig weedless. The picture below shows the point of the hook, and you achieve this by stretching the lure and putting the tip of the hook point in the plastic body. You just need to slightly cover the tip.

As you can see below you can optionally put a worm weight ahead of the lure, and typical weights are 1/16 oz or on very windy days choose 1/8 oz. You’ll want to put this worm weight on the leader prior to typing the hook on the line.

There are hooks made specifically for rigging weedless such as the Mustad Ultra Point Power Lock Plus (what a long name!) hooks that come with an attached weight. By placing the weight on the shaft of the hook the lure will fall more naturally in addition to the ability to setting up a lure quickly. Check them out below. Again notice the hook size and especially the fact that the hook gap is wide enough for the body of the soft plastic.

Rigging these expensive hooks is simple and fast, first you simply push the “Christmas tree” holder into the front of the soft plastic like below.

Secondly you push the hook point through the body of the soft plastic just like below. As mentioned previously, be sure as the last step to push the point of the hook into the body of the soft plastic so that it doesn’t snag the weeds.