spider rigging

I have noticed that most tournament anglers and others, when spider rigging, fish both anglers out the front of the boat with rods spread evenly across the front. My boat is too small for this so we fish one out the front and one out the back. The front angler has his rods spaced out from c/l of the boat to starboard side and the rear angler spaces his from c/l to the port side. It seems that most of the time the front angler will catch more fish all things being equal. Would the rear angler have better results if he were to "longline" out the back even though he would have to adjust to the slower speed of spider rigging by the front angler. Does anyone else have this situation; if so, what do you do to make sure both anglers have an equal chance at catching fish and do you feel fishing like this puts anglers at a disadvantage when fishing against others using front only rod positions????

I've got a smaller boat (a 16' stick steer) so we can only spider rig front and back also. For better boat control I almost always troll into the wind or current so anytime I set the hook or catch a fish my foot automatically comes off the trolling motor till we net the fish. I usually try to throw out a bouy before I grab the net then I will try to pass right back over that same spot. Sometimes many times and because of this I will usually catch more up front than my partner in the back because his part of the boat won't travel over where the fish are as much as the front does. BUT, this year a couple of times while spider rigging over 16'-20' fow with no structure in fairly clear water we had days where his very back poles out caught everything else by a huge margin. We would even switch over to the same setup ( jigs, weights & depths) but the back lines did continuously WAY better. We were catching all big sows out in open water that seemed to be attacking our "school of jigs" from behind and below. We were only running our lines 8'-10' FD around 1 mph so our our lines were actually only 5-6 feet deep. So, I'd say most days the one in front will do best but some days the one in back will catch more. If we were side to side who knows, I guess the most perpendicular lines would have done best??

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My buddy and I fish similar to this; he has 4 rods on front deck spread evenly port to starboard and I fish 4 rods spread similar across the back. We don’t sit still we constantly move and honestly I would say that the back of the boat catches as much as the front of the boat. I will say that the only time I have not caught as many fish as the front is when we use a drift sock off the back, in those cases long lining is your best option.

Years ago I watched an elderly man in a small boat spider rig by running his boat side ways. He had his trolling motor installed on the side of the boat and all the rods out the other side. It looked odd to see the boat going down the lake sideways but it worked.

Yes! Pull bombers 40-50 feet back.

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Originally Posted by ezgoing

Years ago I watched an elderly man in a small boat spider rig by running his boat side ways. He had his trolling motor installed on the side of the boat and all the rods out the other side. It looked odd to see the boat going down the lake sideways but it worked.

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They call this side pulling now. 40 years ago when I learned to fish they called it sculling. We would ride the 7 1/2 seahorse up wind then drift down wind using a paddle to keep the boat side ways. Over and over again.

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Should have said Bobbers

Me and Trypman fish like this all of the time. Sometimes he front boats me, but most of the time I say the catch ratio is about even.


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With a good wind, I can turn the outboard full left or right and the boat will drift sideways allowing both guys to get first shot. I watch a gent in a big ranger boat with no less than 8 out the front and the same out the back. Wish I had what he spent on rods cuz they’re all the same. It may even be 10 each, or 12, I have never seen a spider rig with so many. I watched from a distance as he went through an area that had given me a few fish earlier when I went through it, and both he and his partner stayed busy about equally. That answers the question you ask for me. When I did spider I would run 8 rods out the front, full spread from left to right, and 4 or 6 from the back. When it was active, every rod in the boat got bit about equal but when slow it was a roll of the dice. I can cover lots more ground long lining and that suits my inner motor that just runs too fast to ease around when it’s slow.