A-Rig Not a Bass Killa?

Alan Clemons at the PAA recently put up an interesting post on the Alabama Rig. In it the guy who made the rig famous – Paul “kneel and rig” Elias – tells about the results of his and a few other’s tests of the rig. And it doesn’t appear to be a bass killa ever-wahr and any-wahr.

Post is worth a full read, but some choice quotes (all from Paul) below:

> No one knows what it’s going to do in spring, in shallow conditions, around grass or anything else.

> I’ve fished five lakes and on two of them I didn’t get a bite on the rig. The lake I live on is 750 acres and I can go out to a few spots, throw a crankbait and catch 5- to 10-pounders. I’ve thrown the rig first, thrown it after catching some fish and still haven’t had a bite on it.

> I threw it at Falcon and didn’t get a bite on it, and everyone knows what kind of fish are down there. They say it’s not a swimbait lake but if this rig is so deadly, wouldn’t you think I could have gotten a bite on it?

> It’s going to be more of a cooler-water bait, and that’s also from talking with Andy (Poss) and others who have used it longer. (FLW pro) Dan Morehead has had one since May and said he thought he’d smoke them on the ledges in summer but they didn’t hardly bite it. Everyone’s got this thing in their head that if you don’t have a rig you’re not going to catch anything. That’s just crazy.

Stuff To Think About

Elias from the same post:

> Someone came up with something that, at a time of the year when it’s hard to catch fish, actually caught fish.

> People ask if it’s ethical. Tell me if it’s more ethical to sit on a spawning fish in spring aggravating the hell out of her to bite, or you run something by her in the fall that tricks her? Which is more ethical? When the bed fishing thing started all these people were screaming and hollering to outlaw ban fishing. Did tournament organizations ban it? No, because DNR studies showed it wasn’t detrimental during the spawn.

> Before the Guntersville tournament everyone was saying the lake was dead. Said there’s been too many tournaments on Guntersville and they ruined it. What did we do? We proved Guntersville wasn’t dead because we brought in a bunch of fish. It blows my mind that all these people in three months can say there’s a lure that will ruin all these lakes.

> Here’s another thing I think people are overlooking. Before the rig came along on Guntersville there wasn’t a spark in the bass market. Everything was dead, nothing going on. Then the rig came along and I won, and some other guys won tournaments, and since then there’s been all kinds of articles, radio interviews and a buzz in the industry. In the industry in autumn when nothing really sells, people have been  going into stores and buying jig heads, rods, swimbaits and line. The most important thing is people are going fishing. It’s putting people out on the water. It doesn’t take too much of a scholar to see the positives outweigh the negatives.
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In case you think Paul is going coconuts, might be the heat….