My Halibut and Weedless Rigs

Here are a few of the new rigs I put together to try.  The first I am excited about.  I have been watching the use of umbrella rigs and really like the look and attraction of the lures.  They really look like a school of fish.  I do not want to have to release any rockfish I catch so I picked up one of the Yumbrella Double rigs.  I did a little modification by adding a willow leaf to the middle for a little more flash.  If this works out I will make a few of my own, using willow leafs and dummy lures, but only two hooks.  I think it will give a nice amount of attraction for a flat fish.  I am going to try 2-4oz bullet weights in front of it and rig the swim baits weedless to keep the weeds off.



These are my weedless "bass" rigs for the kelp.  A texas rigged worm, and my drop shot rig.  I will play around with switching between the basstrix style swimbaits, worms, grubs and tubes to see what works; I am sure they all will.  I like the 10" worm, it looks like an eel and runs nice through the water.  It will be great to work through the kelp lanes and pot holes.  I got some squid scent to spray on the lures so I do not have to tip them with squid as much.  I want to keep them as weedless as possible.  On the drop shot I used a trout snap swivel on the bottom for the weight.  My though is if the weight gets hung up, the snap swivel will straighten out saving my lures.





I also pulled out my bucktails that I used for Stripers, they are 1-2 oz heads.  I am hoping to use them on a seabass, a couple squids pinned on the back or with the white curly tail.



I also poured some new octopus lures.  I am going to try white and see if it gets bit more than the brown.



I love playing in the shop.  Preparing for fishing is almost as fun as fishing itself!  I Preparing for fishing is almost as fun as fishing itself!  I am going to give these all a run tomorrow and see how they work and what changes I want to make.

I bet that umbrella rig will KILL!  Especially on the schooling rockfish.  I've used similar variations of your Texas and drop-shot rigs, and they work great.  I like the idea of using a trout swivel for the lead on the drop-shot.  I've normally used large Slinky weights and pencil lead as my drop-shot weights.  The Slinkys are particularly snag-less, but since they don't sink very fast I only use them in the really shallow stuff (less than 20 feet).  I rarely ever use bait for rockfish anymore, as the plastics you've pictured here coupled with a light glaze of commercial scent work just fine.  One thing I'll do with both the Texas rig and the drop-shot is add a ball bearing swivel about 1-2 feet above the lure to minimize line twist.  Keep it in mind if you're experiencing mad line twist OTW, as it's saved me a lot of frustration.

And that white octopus jig?  Deeeaaad meat!  I bet the lings will love it.

Great job Matt, can't wait for the report 

My favorite thing to troll for stripers in the delta is a Yumbrella rig with 3 baits.  On the sides I use the standard white grubs that come with the rig and in the middle I tie a 6-12" leader with a 1/2 oz big hammer with 3" white or pearl body.  That thing gets hammered every time.  On a trip with my brother trolling the Carquinez Straight we pulled up about 3 dozen stripers and although they were all undersize we had a blast.