Soft swimbait rigging idea.

[keithdog]

This is going to be my first year of fishing with soft swimbaits, such as the Yum Money Minnow. I used them for the first time late last fall so I havn't had much opportunity to try them out yet. The one complaint that I hear more than others when using this bait is the poor hookup ratio. There seems to be a lot of missed fish when using this lure. Or so I hear. The basic setup as most here know involves a large wide gap offset hook in say a 6/0 or larger. The minnow is rigged texas style through the nose, up through the belly and out the back where the point of the hook is barely slipped just under the lures skin. Often a weighted hook is used where the weight is on the shank of the hook, and hides in the belly. It's a pretty basic and simple rigging. But there still seems to be many fish that fail to get hooked for whatever reason.
Now forgive me if this has been discussed before, but I havn't seen it mentioned. So here goes. Next time, after you run the point of the hook through the nose of the minow, slip a treble hook onto the main hook shank before turning it up into the belly and out the back. I'm figuring a size 2 treble would be about right. Then finish rigging the main hook as normal. This will leave you with a normally rigged soft swim bait, with a single treble hook hanging from the belly of the minnow. I can't see that addition adversly affecting the swimbaits swimming motion, and it should drastically improve hookup ratios. As long as the water your fishing isn't heavily weeded or brush filled, I think this should work. I know I'm going to give it a try.