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2. Why did you pick those baits/tails for the A-rig?
> "...it's just kind of that happy-medium size. If you go smaller than that they don't produce enough lift, and if you go bigger than that they don't swim at slow speeds.
> "So it's just kind of the right size to be fished slow but still maintain enough lift that you can keep it slow – keep it flat at a slow speed."
3. Obviously A-rigs look like a little school of bait – do you think that's why the fish respond to them when they don't respond to the minnow?
> "Yes...an A-rig is just such a big presence. There's so much going on, so much intrigue.
> "My big belief with largemouth is that profile and action is everything. So they don't necessarily [perceive] an A-rig as being a bunch of single individual shad or minnows. ...[it's] an entire school...so much intrigue, so much potential value to them.
> "In dirty, cold water, which is what we had to deal with at the Harris Chain, [the A-rig] is kinda a no-brainer thing. ...they can't pass it up, at least following it or showing interest. For cold, dirty-water largemouth I don't think there's anything as powerful...."
[He fished Beauclair the most, and thought the dirty water on that chain was caused by a lack of grass in multiple lakes. You agree with that FL peeps?]
Is the feel of all of that moving through the water?
> "It's a combination of visibility and water displacement...not just purely water displacement because [that] alone – I don't think having a ton of water displacement is generally a positive.
> "With A-rigs, the bigger the wires, the less you get bit.... You get to certain point where bass become intimated by it. Having the water displacement is important but I think too much of it can be overkill.
> "I think a lot of it is visibility – 5 swimbaits, 4 blades, flashing, kicking, swimming. I'm a very firm believer that bass are sight predators. If they weren't, I could miss them by 5' with my A-rig in dirty water and they'd still attempt to come find it – but unless I hit them dead in the head they wouldn't attempt to come find it.
> "I'm not saying they didn't know it was there, but bass require some level of visibility to...pursue something. The only real factor I've noticed that forces bass to pursue a bait – deviate from their path and start following – is all visibility-based...."
4. How do you "make sure the first thing they engage with is not the front of the rig"? [He said that on the MLF site.]
> "With an A-rig, although the rig does weigh something, your point of tension is that high point and the rig kind of sags more than you think it does – because the weight drags down beneath.
> "So the best way to ensure that the first thing they engage with is not...the front of the rig, it comes down to either setting up in situation where the bass is facing at you and bringing it from behind it and dropping it into the plane of their awareness once the front of it is past their face...essentially dropping it on their head.
> "Your other option is pretty much like a diagonal angle. Using your rod tip, you lift and pull the tie point higher and letting that back sag down, essentially making less of the wires visible....
> "With catching hard-to-catch very large bass, that first impression is everything. That fish decides whether it wants to bite in the first half a second whether he does it right then or not. So if you can try to mitigate all the negative input on your side in that first half-second...if you can make as intriguing as possible right off the rip, that's what matters.
> "They'll bite it right off the rub rail. You just gotta get them hot right off the rip.And a big part of that is making sure the first thing they see is the most intriguing part of it.
> "That's any bait in general but not many baits have the [A-rig type] dilemma where part of the technique is really unappealing."
5. Do you ever fish an A-rig without the blades?
> "No. It doesn't have the same intrigue. [Blades] help to build the illusion."
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