Art Ferguson's "Old School/New School" Carolina Rig
January 31, 2009
In recent years, the venerable Carolina Rig has gotten something of a bad rap. Its detractors call it the “quitters rig” or worse and many have abandoned it in favor of the dropshot, a shakey head and a football head jig.
“A lot of guys look down on it,” said GYCB veteran pro Art Ferguson. “They say it’s not a threat and sometimes that’s true. But it seems like the Carolina Rig was a key bait at a couple of tournaments this past year.”
The most notable example on the national stage was the BASS Elite event at Falcon Lake in south Texas, where the old “cannonball” produced all or part of numerous 30-pound plus limits and four day catches of over a hundred pounds. But even at the non-slugfests, it’s still a critical part of many top pros’ arsenals.
Ferguson, for one, rarely goes on the water without a Carolina Rig tied on somewhere in his boat. At the BASS Top 150 held on Florida’s Harris Chain of Lakes in 2005, he caught an 11-02 largemouth on a Carolina Rigged Senko. “That’s not typically though of as something you use in Florida, but I had a spot where it was the ideal presentation,” he explained.
So it should come as no surprise that his two best FLW Tour finishes in 2008, a 3rd place finish at Tennessee’s stingy Ft. Loudoun (and its corresponding $40,000 prize) and 9th at Lake Norman, owed largely to a dragging presentation. He said that in recent years over 80% of his Carolina Rig fish have succumbed to a Senko, but the Ft. Loudoun tournament marked something of a turning point, the venue at which he realized when to use the new Swimming Senko on the end of his line.
“At Ft. Loudoun, in practice a couple of key fish that I caught rigging and on a football head and a shakey head had baitfish in their mouths,” Ferguson said. “Either bluegill or shad, but I could see their tails. So I tried the Swimming Senko with that little tail, just like a baitfish tail swimming, and I believe it made a difference. The guy practicing with me tried different baits and I got more bites just dragging it behind the boat.”
While his Day Three catch came primarily on a football head jig, on Days One, Two and Four his key bait was the Carolina Rigged Swimming Senko.
But while his lure was a new one, Ferguson keeps it fairly simple when it comes to rigging the lure. “He hasn’t messed around much with tungsten weights. “I’m an old lead guy and I 
like an egg sinker like the one I make for PROvider Tackle. It gets through cover better and I can feel things better. Until someone proves different, that’s the easiest thing for me. And I use a glass bead to create a ruckus.”
One concession he makes to modernity is the use of fluorocarbon straight through, specifically Sunline FC Sniper fluoro – usually 16 lb. for the main line and 14, 12 or 10 for the leader. He spools it on a Shimano Curado reel and pairs them with a Kistler LTA medium-heavy or heavy rod. “You have to throw a seven and a half foot or longer rod,” he implored. “You can get away with something shorter, but the extra length gives you that much more casting distance and hook setting ability.”
When it comes to color, his choices are extremely simple. In most situations, he’ll start with 912 (green pumpkin/watermelon) – “I want it to be natural more than anything.” Typically, the only place he mixes it up is in Florida and on grass lakes, where junebug gets the nod. After that, the lure itself does most of the work. At Ft. Loudoun, it wasn’t so much a matter of precise presentation or a particular cadence. As noted above, he could catch the fish just by “strolling” along, dragging the lure behind the back of the boat.
And if you think Ferguson is excited about Carolina Rigging coming off his top finish in the FLW Tour Angler of the Year race, it only promises to get better in 2009. He can’t wait to put the new ten-inch Kut Tail worm through its paces this year. He got a few of them prior to the East-West Fish Off on Falcon and declared them “bad to the bone. Take a trick worm and add three inches and that’s what you’ve got, but it’s not a finesse bait.”
New categories of lures, colors and techniques keep the magazines full and allow the tackle sellers to remain in business, but sometimes it’s just a simple system, tweaked now and again, that allows a veteran like Ferguson to give his career a shot in the arm. The Carolina Rig – don’t leave the dock without it.