Thread: Spider Rigging 101

Originally Posted by C_McKinney

What about rod options? Looking at Capps and Coleman. What lengths to buy?

Most all of the top of the line rods have their place. If you buy cheap, you pretty well get what you pay for. I started out with a mix of different kinds of rods. We were on the lake and my wife would pick them out and say to get rid of them because they weren't acting right. I gave and traded all the odd balls away. I then went to straight B&Ms. I started with BGJP's and even pulled cranks with them. I decided that to finish out my set of 8, 12' b&ms for spider rigging, I would just buy pst's. I fished the mixed pst's and bgjp's for a short time and discovered that lots of days I couldn't see the spider rigging bite on the pst's, but the psts worked better cranking. I finally just broke down and bought enough poles to finish a set of bgjp's for spider rigging and a set of pst's for cranking.

I haven't got to use all the top of the line poles out there, and wouldn't dare push one brand over another brand until I got a chance to use them all in different kinds of fishing. I would go with the longest length I could handle. I have run some 16's this year and have had good success, but they can be a handful. We normally run 12's which is an easy length to become accustomed to. One thing that will help offset the pole length problem is to get the rod holders and seats as far toward the bow as possible. I am currently working on a solution for this on the boat I am rigging. Pics will follow in the boat rigging thread before long. This serves 2 purposes with the number 1 being you are fishing further away from the noise of the trolling motor. The second thing it accomplishes is making the bow heavier. With a heavy bow, your poles/baits will hold steadier in the water and not be jerking around due to the boat bouncing in choppy water. I think the fish like the presentation better and you can see the bite better as well. Don't be afraid to put batteries in the front storage or even dipping up 5 gallon buckets of water to ride the bow on a rough day. The ultimate fix for this is to go with a glass boat, but as I have mentioned before, every piece of equipment has its place and time that it is the perfect fishing tool, but no rod, boat, jig, trolling motor, or fishing style, is perfect in all situations.

BTW, I have never used a capps and coleman rod but I think they are a good dual use rod that is somewhere between the bgjps and psts as far as backbone and sensitivity from what I have read and heard about them.