Soft Plastic lures are a huge part of the bass fishing industry, and they're amazing at catching fish. Here at MONSTERBASS, we want to help you catch your PB, so here are 10 ways to rig the soft plastics featured in our most recent Monthly bags. Jeff from @Burly Fishing​ is here to show you options on 5 different soft plastics!

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Video Transcript:

Jeff Burlingame:

How's it going guys. Welcome back to the MONSTERBASS YouTube channel. I'm Jeff Burlingame from Burly fishing. Today I want to talk to you about how to rig soft plastics, specifically the plastics that came in our February and March bags. If you guys got your February bag, we had cool baits, such as these right here. We had our Thunder Hawk and we had our HR Baits. We're going to talk about those. If you've got your BASSMASTERE Classic bag from March, then you've got the Hale Crawl Worm, very unique plastic. We're going to talk about a bunch of different ways to rig. We've got the Chigger Craw and we got the Gambler Bacon Rind. We got some baits, five different brands, five different plastics. How do you rig them? I'm going to tell you, basically, my two favorite ways to rig each one of those plastics and we'll rig it on camera too, so you can try it the next time you go hit the water.

Jeff Burlingame:
Hey, if you like content like this as well, and you want to hear from other awesome creators in the fishing industry, then stick around to the MONSTERBASSS channel, consider subscribing, smash the like on this video, that helps us out a lot, and ring that notification bell, so you can see when we drop more content. We also go live a bunch of times a week with Rick, so if you want to hop onto one of those, stay tuned, keep your notifications on. Pop in and say, hi, we'd love to talk to you guys and chat.

Jeff Burlingame:
And, if you guys are super awesome and you want to come hang out with me, go check out Burly Fishing. I drop videos three days a week and we do a live podcast every single Thursday at 8:00 PM Eastern. If you want to pop over from the MONSTERBASS live, which goes live at 7:00 PM Eastern, after that ends, come hang out with me and my buddy Paul, as we talk to awesome people in the fishing industry. Hop on over there, subscribe. Let me know you came over from the MONSTERBASS channel and I'll say hi. Thanks a lot.

Jeff Burlingame:
Okay. We got plastics to rig. Let's do this. So let's start out with the Thunder Hawks. This one right here is a pretty phenomenal plastic. It feels really durable. It's called the Camel Craw, so it's more of this like... Craw, actually kind of a cross between, based on the claws, like craw style, right? Up to the body, that thicker body, more of the beaver or bug style, or whatever your preference is in your area of the country, to call it. It feels pretty durable, pretty thick. We're going to find out because we're going to poke some hooks through it. How would you rig this? By the way, I'm telling you my two favorite ways per plastic. I want to hear from you guys. How do you like to rig these? Hit me up in the comments below. Let me know your go-to methods.

Jeff Burlingame:
Now this thing right here, based on the shape of it, is something that I would, because it has these claws, probably be flipping, right? If I'm flipping this thing, my go-to flipping setup, I'll show you guys. If we're rigging this thing to flip, then we're going to grab ourselves a flip and hook. Something like this VMC right here. Super easy to use. You can see it's also got some line tie guides right here, as well as bait keeper. What you're going to do with these, is you're going to Snell knot them. Now, there are a lot of Snell knot videos out there on the internet, so I recommend you go watch one that's real up close and looks really good.

Jeff Burlingame:
Today, we're focusing on the plastics. All right? Let's get into this one. If we're going to rig this up to flip, then we're just going to take our flipping hook, I'm going to poke it right into the back of this bad boy. Come down, I don't know, around a quarter inch or so, I'm going to slide it through the back, right? So this has a very obvious top section and a flat back section, slide our bait all the way up onto that bait keeper section up top. This is a pretty dense plastic, I will say that. Then we're going to swivel it around. Right? So top section out, we've got our hook down there.

Jeff Burlingame:
Cool thing about flipping hooks and baits that are good for flipping, is that you can go ahead and do a full body, no tech spose. You don't let the hook come out the top of it. You just take your hook and you stab it right into the middle of the body and just run it up, and that's it. Now there's no exposed hook there, straight body design. But if a fish munches down on this, check this out, as it bites, we're going to get that hook exposure. No problem. See that hook coming out? There you go. So definitely, and this is something that I learned from some of the awesome people on my channel actually, do not expose that hook, because you're going to catch way more often and you're going to have a kinked body shape to that plastic. Just shove the hook right up into the meat of the body and leave it in there. There you go.

Jeff Burlingame:
What I do recommend for your flipping setup is, number one, you're going to want a nice flipping weight. I don't know. Maybe you could use the brand new MONSTERBASS flipping weights? We've got a half ounce right here, and this is an awesome pro tip that I learned from people way smarter than me. You want to get a bead. Here's one I picked up from WOO! Tungsten, right? So a little bead and what's going to happen is you're going to actually have the bead sitting right beneath that flipping weight. I'm going to show you what that does on something I already had rigged up. Here we have a Strike King Rage Bug rigged up on a flipping hook, just like so. We got our bead up at the top of that line tie and then we've got our weight right there.

Jeff Burlingame:
I would also recommend, depending on your cover, to peg it. If you're running through some grass, maybe peg it tight. If you're around more open cover, you can move that peg way up and let that weight kind of swing freely, which is nice. Gives you a little different fall action. What happened is, see that bead there? Yep. See the hook? Bam. So you set the hook, bam, that hook is going straight into the basses mouth, right? And you are going to get an awesome hook set with that. You already do with a flipping hook, but add the bead and it's 10 times better, so just something to consider there. I think that would really help.

Jeff Burlingame:
Next up and obvious one, if you want to toss this thing around, would be to Texas Rig it. Next thing I'd recommend, get yourself a nice hook like this spear point here, and then we're going to do a very similar thing. We're going to thread that hook through the top. I'm going to punch out a quarter inch down. We're going to slide it all the way up. So on your EWG hooks, you got that nice little elbow at the top before the line ties, so that's where that bait is going to sit. Now with these spear points, what you actually want to do with these to make sure that they rig straight, is instead of going straight down, you're actually going to come in on a bit of an angle. We're going to roll that bait up, but then instead of going straight through, we're going to actually fold it up on an angle here. Okay?

Jeff Burlingame:
Now I'm entering at this angle. I'm going to feel the hook right there, punch that all the way through, so I'm all the way through. Then we're just going to skin hook or tech spose, that hook point. What that's going to do for us, because I came through on that angle, look how straight this is. Because I came through on the angle, it's not folded up and kinked in this weird spot. It is straight, just like that. The cool thing about these spear points is they actually let you rig straighter than even a regular EWG will. I think they look really good too. Then this little elbow joint down here is also going to help you keep fish pinned. So there you go. We got Texas Rigged. Two favorite options for that Camel Craw from Thunder Hawk, right away, flip it, Texas Rig it, all day long.

Jeff Burlingame:
Next up we've got these HR Baits, the Battle Bug Creature bait. It's color is like a sand color. There you go. Very thin, long thin profile. I'm going to give you two different ways that we would rig this one. One, I Texas Rig it. It's very thin though, so what I would do, I would take like an offset worm hook. We're just going to punch in, the same kind of way we were rigging before, go a quarter inch down. Come down, turn it around, doesn't matter what side is up. There we go. Because of how thin this plastic is, we're going to tech spose, bring that hook all the way through and then skin hook it. Then skin hook it, then come up. It's very skinny plastic. There we go. Okay, so there we go. We're going to Texas Rig it, something like that. It's going to look good. Very skinny plastic, right? Interesting. But then you got the awesome little appendages down there at the bottom. Then pair that up with a nice little weight up on top. Maybe a MONSTERBASS Tungsten. I don't know, just throwing it out there. That could work.

Jeff Burlingame:
I like the offset warm hook shape though, just because it's a little bit of a smaller profile. I'd rather throw that then if it's a meatier plastic, right? The other way I might rig this, one, it's kind of a nice trailer for maybe a Chatterbait. Two, take something like this Headbanger lures Rockerhead, with that EWG hook off the back, and pair this up with it as well. We just Texas Rig it with the hook. Boom. There we go. You got that little Rockerhead moving like crazy. These claws and appendages are doing lots of work moving along the bottom. A cool thing about the Rockerhead too is, because of that cup mouth, it's going to move like that in the water, but you can also bang it around cover. Let it hit the bottom, rip it up. It'll vibrate coming up, let it fall, it's going to have a cool little falling pattern. Then you can just straight swim it, easy retrieve, lots of options there.

Jeff Burlingame:
Now we get to the BASSMASTER Classic Box. We've got the PowerBait Chigger Craw. That bead is gone forever. It doesn't matter. The Chigger Craw is a straight, classic craw, looks awesome, got these floating claws to it. It's going to do work. So how this got into our BASSMASTER Classic Box, is it helped Boyd Duckett win the 2007 BASSMASTER Class and later on helped Skeet Reese, but it's just a fantastic craw, right? How would we rig this? Well, the pros won by Texas Rigging it, so you Texas Rig it, 100%.

Jeff Burlingame:
I would take an EWG hook. We'll take our spear point here. I'm going to rig it that exact same way. Let's thread that through, a quarter inch from the top. You guys are going to get so fast at this as you practice. Again, remember if using that spear point, you're not going straight through, you're going to come through on an angle. Right? Look at that right there. I'm going to roll it up a little bit higher than I would expect to, and then come through at an angle, make sure my hook comes through. There we go. Then I'm going to skin hook that right there as well. Now it's straight, straight as can be, and pair it up with a weight. There we go. We Texas Rigged that one.

Jeff Burlingame:
Another option we could use. Another option for that is we take it and we rig it to a jig. So here we have a Stanley jig that actually also came in this box. Now, if I'm pairing it up with a jig, what I like to do is set it up next to the jig, see how far off that jig it's going to come. You can see it's coming off just a little bit. I don't think it's too big a profile though, so we're going to leave it. If we wanted to, we could take and just rip off one of these segments. There we go. We just break down our craw a little bit and now we're going to have a slightly smaller profile on that jig. Right?

Jeff Burlingame:
Let's go ahead and thread this on the jig, see what that looks like. Stanley Jigs jig, with that PowerBait Chigger Craw, looks phenomenal. I think these floating claws are going to have a ton of awesome action in the water as well. Look at it. I think it's kind of the perfect length. That's where I'd want it to be. That looks good. Jig or Texas Rig would be the answer for that one. And that's that PowerBait Chigger Craw.

Jeff Burlingame:
Next up, we got the Gambler, and for this one it's called the Bacon Rind. It's in a junebug color. This one's a little bit different. I want to show you guys the Carolina Rig. This is 110,000% something I would Carolina Rig, especially with that awesome curly tail to it. We're going to start with that one. Now, if you want to be a cheater like me, you just get the Strike King pre rigged Carolina Rig ready to go. If you don't want to cheat, then you just need a half ounce to a one ounce brass weight, like a worm weight, flipping weight, some sort, and then you need like a little bead. You can do any combination of these beads. You can do a lot of variations with it. basically just where you see this wire for the pre rig, is this would be your line.

Jeff Burlingame:
Then you're going to have this little swivel, right there below that. Then coming off of this swivel off the back end, you're going to have some floating line like monofilament line, which goes to an EWG hook. We've done this 1,000 times, but you're going to take an EWG. This is just a bait. I don't even know what bran this is, probably a Gamakatsu, tech spose, or bury it. Now look at that. We're going to have this coming off the tail end of that. That's going to look so good just moving through the water. Then we're just going to take and use, for example, the Trilene, which is a form of monofilament line that came in The BASSMASTER Classic Box. You guys are actually ready to Carolina Rig this thing. We take off some of our line here, say, jury's out on how much line you actually want, but we'll just take 18 inches, or so, off. Take that, tie a Palomar knot, or something, to one end and then do the same to the other end.

Jeff Burlingame:
Okay. Here's our Carolina Rig setup. We got our preset Carolina Rig again. If you'd rather do it with a line through do that highly recommend it. It's going to have more action anyways, but this works fine if it's what you got. I just did it because it's easier to rig up today, right? We're tied on to our swivel and then we've got about, it's probably too much line, but 20, 24 inches here coming down to our EWG with that Gambler Bacon Rind, which looks sick. There you go. What's going to happen is, this weight's going to take a nose dive and this mono is floating line and this is a floating bait. It's just going to ease on down, but you're going to get all that action out of that tail as it's dropping, so that's going to look good. You're just kind of hopping this round, just moving and grooving man, until you get a bite.

Jeff Burlingame:
How else could we rig this? That's right. A Tokyo Rig. We're going to take a VMC Tokyo Rig right here. This one's got a 5/8 Oz weight rigged up to it already. Then your line tie comes off of this barrel swivel right there. We've got an EWG. So guess what? We're going to Texas Rig it again, and there you have it. Tokyo Rig is awesome. We've got our curly tail coming off the back here, appendages moving, tons of action there. Rather than having it come floating down on that mono line at a slower rate, this is going to be like Texas Rigging it two inches off the bottom, right? So it gives us just a different appearance of it, a little different approach, but better for the action that this plastic can give you. It's definitely going to draw some awesome reaction strikes. This is one of my favorite ways to rig in the spring. Mostly because the grass, the foliage, has not grown yet, so there's lower cover and this puts me right at that cover level.

Jeff Burlingame:
Okay. One more bait that we're going to go through today. We've got the Hale Craw Worm, which by the way, is a revival bait. Brought this thing out of retirement, specifically for this MONSTERBASS Box, so that right there is a fantastic lure. This is an awesome looking plastic, thin profile, worm body, crazy action from the claws down there at the bottom. This thing is going to do straight work. Now, you can do a number of things with this. I would say the obvious would be Texas Rig it. Okay. But, you can also throw it on that Stanley Jig we just used and it's going to have a completely different presentation than you would expect. Check this out. Take our Chigger Craw off of here and take our Hale Worm. Without even biting it down, you'll see why in a second. This is going to be interesting.

Jeff Burlingame:
There you go. It's going to have this crazy trailer coming off the back. Now, obviously this is super long for a jig. Does that make it wrong? No, of course it can work. The nice thing about the Hale Craw is this. It is a worm. It is a craw. It is a worm, Ned Rig. Boom. Double use right here. Go ahead and throw this on your Ned Rig jigs, and a craw. What are my two favorite ways to rig this? Well, there's actually three. There's Texas Rig the whole thing, when it's alive and good to go. There's take the cross section of it, threaded up on a jig. Bam, look at it. Perfect profile to that. You're just seeing the claws. You can even trim the skirt even a little bit more on this jig here, but that is the Stanley Jig Hale Craw combo. That is a BASSMASTER Classic winner.

Jeff Burlingame:
Then we take this guy, take my Super K Jigs, Ned Head. You better gosh dang believe we just made a Dead Rig right there. It's actually the perfect combo bait for me. We've got our cross section and our Ned Rig section. Are you joking me right here? Throw this on a 1/10, maybe a 1/16. Maybe even lighter. Go a 1/32 just because of how small that profile is, and you guys are going to smash them on the Ned Rig. You've got that option and then of course Texas Rig it. There's three options on that one. This one is easily the most versatile of the bunch. This thing's fantastic.

Jeff Burlingame:
Wow. Okay. We just rigged a ton of plastics. I got it. A real big mess over here on my table, but hopefully this was helpful for you guys. I feel like the vast majority of answers was Texas Rig with a MONSTERBASS Tungsten flipping weight, just saying. That's a good option. Hopefully it gets you kind of thinking, "Hey, here's a few different ways that I can rig it." At least that's how I rig them here in Michigan. I'm a little bit different from you. I don't know what bodies of water you're fishing, but consider it at least. Those are the ways I'm throwing it. How do you like to throw it? Like I said in the beginning, hit me up in the comments. How are you rigging these things? We want to know. It helps us out a lot to know how you guys are fishing, to know what you're looking for, to know what your expectations are, helps us fill these bags with lures you actually want to fish, so feedback is always welcome.

Jeff Burlingame:
Again, hopefully this video was helpful for you. If it was, again, consider subscribing to the channel. Smash a like on this video, ring that notification bell so you can see when we drop more content, and go check out my channel. Hop over to Burly Fishing and subscribe, smash a like. Talk to me on one of the videos or talk to me in chat on one of our live podcasts. We go live right after MONSTERBASS. 8:00 PM Eastern on Thursdays. Me and my buddy Paul, talking to awesome people in the fishing industry. I'd love to see you there and love to talk to you in chat. Thanks again for watching you guys. I'm Jeff with Burly Fishing and we'll see you on the next video.