An afternoon with Mark Zona about A Rigs

[keithdog]

Recently I had the opportunity to sit in on a seminar by Mark Zona at our local BPS. It was supposed to be about fishing jigs in northern waters. I was very interrested in that, but at show time, he changed the subject to fishing A Rigs. I wasn't happy about that . Neither were a few other guys who were there for the jig talk. But it turned out to be very interresting. First off, Mark made it clear that he didn't know what side of the isle to stand on in regard to whether the A Rig should be legal. He has deep reservations regarding the A Rig. He explained that for the past year he has been using the A Rig extensively after witnessing first hand just how effective the rig is. Frightenly so. Over and over he has been fishing on the water with various pros when the bass would strike at nothing, and as soon as the A Rig was employed, they would load the boat like flicking a switch. He emphasized that the A Rig may be without a doubt the most effective fishing rig ever devised. Bass will come to life and smash into that thing when nothing else will even draw any interrest. And THAT is what has Zona so concerned. One point was that it is not a sporting way to catch bass. He said once a bass gets hooked in the rig, it's like pulling a boot back to the boat. The bass won't fight like they would normally do. He has seen first hand many many bass caught by himself and others he fishes with that have probably been mortally wounded by the A Rig. He said he has no doubts, many of the bass they released died. The reason for this lies in the rigs design. When a bass hits one of the 5 swimbaits, 90% of the time, several of the remaining jigs will become impaled into the basses body as he struggles to escape. Often the loose jigs are getting impaled inside the basses gills causing heavy bleeding. For those of us who pratice catch and release in order to sustain the bass population, this fact alone should cause us to think long and hard about using this rig. Another worry is in the mindset of many fisherman who keep what they catch and do not pratice catch and release. Many of those folks will also keep "everything" they catch, and exceed their daily limit. They essentially are poachers. Unlike most bass fisherman who take great pains to enjoy and protect the resources, the fact is, there are a lot of guys and gals who will take home as many fish as they can catch. Zona worries that if those folks start throwing the A Rig, they could decimate an entire lakes population. That is just how effective this rig can be. He worries the A Rig will be, by far, the most effective way to catch fish of many species. He said no other technique can compare in it's effectivness. And there is danger of misuse in that. Plus, even if C&R is practiced, bass mortality will likely soar due to injury. After all this was said and done, he talked about tackle and something he discovered. It takes large heavy rods and reels with very strong gearing and lower ratios. He explained that most of the bass reels we are all used to using will not hold up to the punishment the a rig will put to the reel. There are reels being designed right now that are specifically made for fishing the a rig. Most of the reels on the market that are capable of working this rig, according to Zona, are the round casting reels, not the low profile. There are a couple low profile that might hold up, but only a couple. Sorry, I don't remember exactly which ones he was refering to. He recommended the larger round Garcia ABU reels, like the 6000 size for now untill some of these newer reels are introduced. He also said the a rig is being designed in smaller versions for guys who fish for perch and other smaller species. NOW, here is something I really found interresting. Those of us who have studied preditors already know that a preditor will seek out that one victom who appears to be weak, sick, or unusual in some way. Mark discovered something about using the A Rig purely by accident. He was using the A Rig one day with 5 swimbaits, all the same color and size. As the day ran on, he ran out of that color, and when he had to replace one of the swimbait bodies, he was forced to use a different color. Now he had 4 swimbaits of one color, and a lone 5th swimbait of a different color. From that point on, 99% of the bass he caught came on that one oddball colored swimbait. So he started experimenting with various colors, always with 4 of one color and 1 of another. Regardless of colors, nearly every strike would come on that one odd colored swimbait! The bass always zeroed in on what it percieved to be that one prey that was different from all the others. Which makes me think. If this is true, and we want to use the a rig without fataly injuring the bass we catch, why not clip the hook pints off the other four like colored swimbaits, using them as an attractor, and just leave the one hook in that swimbait of another color? You can use the rig with success without danger of mortally wounding a bass you want to release. Thats something to think about I believe. Lastly, I'll end this very long post with a tidbit of inside info Mark shared with us. According to Zona, Skeet Reese was using the a rig for 2 years before it ever became public. LOL What a big suprise huh?