The Handbook of Flappin' Hogs, cont.
Chapter 2
How To Fish Flappin' Hogs on Carolina Mojo Rigs
With the Carolina Mojo rig, you are adding weight to fish deeper than a weightless bait can go - but in a way that preserves some freedom of weightless movement. With the Carolina Mojo rig, a short leader is used, and that let's the bait act independent from the sinker for short flurries of weightless movement that fish find attractive.
Steps to make the Carolina Mojo rig shown above are:
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Thread the sinker on the line
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Thread the bright bead on the line
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Thread the rattle strap on the line
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Tie on the swivel
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Tie a 12 to 18 inch long leader to the swivel
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Tie the hook on
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Attach the bait
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Coat all the above with attractant, from the sinker right on down the other components, the leader line and all
Now you're rigged and ready to go Carolina Mojo fishing with Flappin' Hogs! Most articles you read in fishing magazines prescribe a two foot or longer leader, but I can't remember the last time I used a leader much longer than one foot. There's no magic or reason behind using a one foot leader, except it's easier to cast than longer leaders - and it flat out catches fish! Give it a try and see for yourself.
Over 30 bass like this handsome patina-flecked smallmouth hit Flappin' Hogs on Carolina Mojo rigs in 20-25 feet of water one recent Saturday morning.
Fish attractant is first squeezed (MegasStrike gel tube) or dripped (either Yamamoto's own attractant or Kick'n Bass liquid bottle) into each brand new bag of Flappin' Hogs when the bag is first cracked open. Just a small glob or a few drops are necessary. Next, with your fingers from outside the bag, mush the baits around inside so they all get evenly coated with attractant. Whenever you put a fresh bait on the hook, drop the entire rest of the rigging (sinker, bead, rattle, swivel and leader) into the bag and swoosh it all around in there so the entire rig gets lightly coated with the attractant. The more attractant you can lower down with the bait and all over the entire rigging, the more fish you stand to attract.
A few more details on some of the components above:
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Rattle Straps. Two wavy rubber arms and three steel balls are inside each hard plastic rattle chamber. The hard plastic chambers hitting hard bottom make at least as much noise as the steel rattles inside. Of course, the heavy Carolina Mojo sinker itself makes quite a cacophony bashing across the bottom too. After a morning of fishing, the sinker will look like someone chafed it with coarse sandpaper. Still, the in-line and thin shape of a Mojo sinker is remarkably snagless on rough bottom.
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Brightly-colored plastic beads (ten millimeter size) are part of the rig's attraction, not only to bass, but small sunfish, perch and other baitfish are always pecking at the beads like barnyard hens on a junebug. These incessant baitfish bothering the bead (and the bold-colored bead itself) serve to attract bass.
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SPRO Power swivels shown here (size #4) are the highest quality and strongest barrel swivels for their size on the market and turn freely.
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Yamamoto Sugoi hook. Designed by Gary Yamamoto as the perfect ("sugoi" is the Japanese word for "perfect") hook for rigging Yamamoto's soft plastic lures. There is not a more perfect or better match between any hook and Yamamoto soft baits. Gary designed this hook to use with his soft plastic products. It is manufactured by Gamakatsu for Yamamoto.
Heavy 1/2, 5/8, 3/4 and full one ounce sinkers are the standard weights, and it requires a long and heavy action baitcasting rod to best fish a heavy Carolina Mojo rig. A longer, heavier action rod helps not only on the cast but also on the hookset. Carolina Mojo rigging is a heavy tackle tactic.
Carolina Mojo rig photographed barely beneath the water's surface. Because it is heavy and gets to the bottom quickly, Carolina Mojo rigging can be the perfect answer for a backdeck angler who's paired with a frontdeck angler who's "boating" him or her. A front deck angler often moves too fast for the backseater to get their bait to the bottom. The front deck angler can cast far ahead of the boat and let their bait sink properly. However, the person in the back cannot cast directly ahead like that, and some tournament rules even prohibit the person in back from casting too far ahead. Bottom line, a backseater using average weight baits usually cannot cast far enough ahead or let the bait sink long enough to fish effectively. The heavy Carolina Mojo rig circumvents that problem. It gets to the bottom and into the strike zone regardless of how quickly a front deck angler may be moving the boat. The heavy Carolina Mojo rig can be a backseat boater's best friend.
Because of the distance between the bait and the weight, it's awkward to cast. A Carolina rig often starts to "bolo" or twirl around at some point when the rig's flying velocity slows down midway during a cast. If nothing's done to correct this, it can cause the rig to twirl and tangle in mid-air. When the rig starts to bolo in flight, apply additional light thumb pressure to the reel spool to straighten out and stabilize the Carolina rig components in mid-air. Done properly, this doesn't affect casting distance. With a long rod, a slow, sweeping underhand sidearm swing cast helps the components stay smoother and straighter than an overhead hurl. However you cast, pay attention to applying additional light thumb pressure to straighten it out when the rig starts to twirl in mid-air.
Chapter 3
How To Fish Flappin' Hogs on Texas Twist Rigs
With the Texas Twist rig, you are adding weight to fish deeper than a weightless bait can go - but in a way that preserves some freedom of weightless movement. With the Texas Twist rig, a short leader is used, and that let's the bait act independent from the sinker for short flurries of weightless movement that fish find attractive.
Most Texas rigs just use a bullet sinker on the main line ahead of the hook and bait. That's all. The photo above shows something a little bit different. The bullet sinker and a bright plastic bead are threaded on a short leader line about a foot long, tied off to a swivel. I call this variation a "Texas Twist" rig. It keeps the sinker from getting more than a foot apart from the bait and the brightly-colored bead has the same potential to attract bass as does dying the tail tip of a soft bait in chartreuse (or whatever other color) dye. For instance. if you think of Yamamoto's popular color #913 Senko, it's actually color 301 green pumpkin with purple and green flake plus a chartreuse tail tip. The same #913 color tipping effect is achieved with the chartreuse bead and color #301 Flappin' Hog shown above. You're essentially making your own color #913 by adding the chartreuse bead to the 301 bait. The sinker also clicks constantly against the bead, adding an alluring noise to the presentation. Put a little fish attractant into the bag of baits you are using, and every time you rig a fresh bait, drop the entire rig into the bag that has fish attractant in it. thereby coating the entire rig.
In the photo above, you can see the perfect match between the bait and the 3/0 Sugoi hook. The hook point is rigged in the very tip of the body, so there isn't much plastic the point needs to be pulled out of when the hook is set. At the same time, the flappers far out to the sides of the hook serve as significant snag protection. The flappers deflect the hook point away from snags in a way that slimmer baits could not.
The short leader is typically tied of heavier 16 to 20 pound test Sugoi fluorocarbon. The heavier leader is in constant contact with and gets chafed by the bottom and by bass. The heavier leader withstands all the brunt of abrasion. Therefore a lighter main line may be used, such as the ten pound test spinning tackle shown above. The 3/0 Yamamoto Sugoi hook is not such thick wire and it isn't embedded so deeply in the Flappin' Hog's plastic body. It can be set every time with a beefy spinning rod such as Gary Yamamoto's medium action spinning rod model #SM3701M shown above with ten pound test.
Casting and retrieving can work swell, but you really are fishing blind and therefore covering featureless (and fishless) bottom most of the time. In stained water, fishing the Texas-rigged Flappin' Hog directly below the bow of the boat can be more effective than casting blind (assuming you have a sonar transducer in or mounted on the trolling motor). The ideal depth is 15-20 feet of stained water. Fish the Texas-rigged Flappin' Hog like you'd fish a jigging spoon, but jig it more slowly and gently directly beneath the bow. Don't flip it any further than 20-30 feet ahead in the direction you are moving with the trolling motor (similar to spooning). Get into a good general area and put the trolling motor on very low speed. Concentrate on jigging over any small gravel patches or any little rough rubble spots that show up on the sonar screen. Some of these spots may be no bigger than a sedan. Learn how to maneuver with the trolling motor so you can reverse direction right away or in whatever direction lets the bow linger right over these small rough patches. You read a lot in fishing magazines about how boats spook fish, but that's not always true. If the motor's on low enough speed and if you perform direction changes slowly and smoothly, this often does not alarm fish to have the bow directly overhead, especially in stained water. Simply lift and lower the Texas-rigged Flappin' Hog like you would a spoon, but softer. A lot of solitary fish (often good ones) hold on these small and obscure rough patches of bottom that are difficult to target any other way.
This gorgeous leopard-spotted smallie and a bunch of its largemouth and smallmouth cousins were landed one recent Sunday morning on Texas Twist rigs with Yamamoto Flappin' Hogs jigged directly below the bow of the boat.
In summary, with the Carolina Mojo rig as well as the Texas Twist rig, you are adding weight to fish deeper than a weightless bait can go - but in a way that preserves some freedom of weightless movement. With both rigs, the short leader let's the bait act independent from the sinker for short flurries of weightless movement that fish find attractive. The bright bead adds a shot of contrasting color to the presentation and serves to attract smaller fish that peck the bead, in turn attracting bass. Don't neglect to lightly-coat the baits and the rigs entirely in fish attractant and pick up a pack of 3/0 Yamamoto Sugoi hooks that perfectly match Flappin' Hog.
The Flappin' Hog is small and compact but at the same time it's big and bulky for its size. That sounds like a contradiction until you fish one. We hope you'll give it a try.
Chapter 4
How To Fish Flappin' Hogs on No Sinker Rigs
Originally designed by Japanese anglers for fishing in Japan, it may surprise you how anglers there actually rig the Yamamoto Flappin' Hog. In this chapter, we are most fortunate to get the details directly from Gary Yamamoto's man in Japan, Shunji Tanaka. Please enjoy!
First, for the hook, we usually use Gary Yamamoto's size 3/0 Sugoi hook for the Flappin' Hog. Whatever way you rig it, this size Sugoi hook is perfectly matched with the Flappin' Hog. There is no better hook for it.
We usually use the Flappin' Hog in shallow cover areas like bushes, brush, grass, weeds, reeds, etc.
Anywhere there are shallow weeds or wood, these are the best areas for fishing Flappin' Hogs.
We use the no sinker rig to cast the Flappin' Hog to the outer edge of cover. In North America, the no sinker rig is called a weightless rig. It is the same thing, simply the Flappin' Hog on a 3/0 Sugoi hook with no sinker.
A unique feature of the Flappin' Hog and what makes it so effective is its fat tail section, meaning the fat end opposite the two "bunny ears."
By making the no sinker rig as shown in the next two photos, the Flappin' Hog falls and sinks with the fat tail end first or "backward" down underneath the outer edge of cover, moving backward under weeds, under docks, under overhanging trees, away from the angler.
With the no sinker rig, if you control the slack in your line, you can insert the Flappin' Hog deeper into or under cover from where it landed on the cast. You will need to study and practice how to control your slack line to really get good at inserting it deep underneath cover. It does not need to be overhead cover either. For example, if there are tall reed beds with a little space in between each reed stalk, you can land a cast in front of the reed line, and control the slack line to insert the Flappin' Hog deeper back in between the reeds. Practice makes perfect!
Bottom view of no-sinker rig with new color #335 blue with blue flake.
Top view of no sinker rig shows the tip of the hook embedded barely under the skin of the soft plastic. This is called "skin-hooking" a Texas rig or "Tex-skin" rigging.
Chapter 5
How To Fish Flappin' Hogs on Screw Sinker Rigs
In this chapter, Gary Yamamoto's man in Japan, Shunji Tanaka, tells us one more method to land big bass in grass with Flappin' Hogs. Shunji's advice follows...
Components to make the screw sinker rig are shown above.
Bottom view of color #213 (june bug) Flappin' Hog on screw sinker rig. Note the sinker is not attached to the line. It is only screwed into the fat tail end of the Flappin' Hog. This causes it to penetrate dense weeds tail first.
The screw sinker rig does not move backward into or under cover horizontally. What it does is dig and slip its way straight down vertically into the very heart (not the edges) of very dense cover.
So, we use the screw sinker rig to probe the middle areas of thick cover where the no sinker rig cannot go. The screw sinker rig is cast directly inside, beyond the outer edge where the no sinker rig cannot penetrate, and it slides straight down under the cover.
So between the two rigs:
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the no sinker rig probes back under the outer edges, and
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the screw sinker rig hits straight into the dense heart of cover, well beyond the edges.
With either the no sinker or screw sinker rig, the 3/0 Sugoi hook can be "Tex-skin" rigged as shown in the photo above. The fat tail section of the Flappin' Hog is so wide, and the two balls out to the sides also keep snags away from the hook point. So the point does not need to be buried very deeply in the plastic like you'd need to bury it in thin worms.
Now you're rigged and ready to fish the Flappin' Hog the way we use them in Japan! I hope you'll give the no sinker and the screw sinker rigs a try. Wherever you find weedy or woody cover in North America, these rigs should work for you too.