Kevin Van Dam Forums

and bought a rig to throw a ‘bama rig on, and I have a shipment from TW with a few umbrellas coming. now Im looking at what swimbaits to buy. for those of you guys who have used the A-rig, what swimbaits have done best for you?

Caught a couple little ones on an a-rig with 3.5” big hammer style.

Ive caught them on Basstrix and shadaliscious. When I was paired with Swindle, he said Bass Magic was his favorite due to the action.

I have yet to catch anything on the A-rig but I have been using the Skinny Dipper and Little Dipper from Reaction Innovations.  Great action just not use to throwing something that big and gaudy so I really haven’t given it a fair chance.

don’t need to throw a swimbait if you don’t have any, you can use just about anything from grubs to crankbaits, lipless and lipped, worms, tubes, frogs, topwater, flukes or whatever you got. you can mix and match or do whatever you want. you could hook up beetle spins if you want.

I can’t imagine an A-rig with cranks working well, with all those arms & trebles, that’d have to be foul & snag city. I haven’t thrown one yet, but I’d like to get a 3 arm & do one willow blade & then a couple plastics of some variety on jigheads.

actually cranks run good, they are far enough apart that they don’t foul and depending on whether they are shallow, medium or deep cranks they help you control the depth. i also like twin tail grubs and flukes on jig heads. i can only run to hooks, i got willow blades on the other arms.

There is no way a crankbait other than a lipless would work good on a fixed wire rig. The cranks would all be working against eachother trying to dive. You would have the cranks each pushing down on the back end at a different angle, then the rig itself trying to stay horizontal.. would be one hell of an ugly mess going through the water. Not to mention it would weigh 6oz+ and cause more drag than a bass rod could handle. Would need an XHF musky rod for sure.

ah well I have a couple different swimbaits I was just asking opinions. It will take a while for me to get used to throwing that beast too. I will probably end up using grubs for alot of the SM here, I cant see frogs doing very well on an A-rig though lol.

I wonder how many of them pike will slam this thing

BBK - 31 May 2012 06:47 PM

There is no way a crankbait other than a lipless would work good on a fixed wire rig. The cranks would all be working against eachother trying to dive. You would have the cranks each pushing down on the back end at a different angle, then the rig itself trying to stay horizontal.. would be one hell of an ugly mess going through the water. Not to mention it would weigh 6oz+ and cause more drag than a bass rod could handle. Would need an XHF musky rod for sure.

on a double rig 2 different cranks would work, 1 would run high and the other low in a more vertical fashion. if the cranks were all the same say 2,3,4,5 kvd 1.0’s, 1.5’s ,2.5’s they should all run true. i wouldn’t run more thsan 2 or 3 cranks and i wouldn’t run anything but shallow cranks but theoretical if all 5 cranks are equal and you got a saltwater rod and reel it should work fine. i don’t expect anyone to do it, i wouldn’t, but it is doable. i don’t have the equipment to throw 5 swimbaits if it was legal.