These rigs are sold in different variations of a Carolina Rig. One comes with a circle hook, a bead, and weight already added to a wire leader. So all you need to do is attach it directly to your mainline, and you’re ready to fish. These are convenient and something that every catfish angler should keep in their tackle box. In this guide, I will be showing you how to setup your Eagle Claw rig.
Alternatively, you can tie up all of this yourself by creating a Carolina rig, a circle hook, beads, and an egg sinker, and put them all together using snell knots.
How to Set Up
Simply attach your mainline to the swivel and you are ready to go fish! If yours doesn’t come with a hook, add that to the snap side.
These rigs also come without a hook or weight. What you might see is a wire with two snap swivels and a barrel swivel. Don’t worry, although it takes a bit more time to rig, this version of the just allows for more customization with your hooks and weights.
The first step here is to tie a separate barrel swivel to the end of your main line. Connect the longer-sided snap swivel to this barrel. Now what you’re left with is the short-side snap swivel and the empty barrel. Now you’ll want to attach a barrel weight to the remaining snap swivel. Lastly, tie a 12-inch piece of heavy mono or fluoro line to the remaining barrel swivel. At the end of this line, add your circle hook.
How To Fish
Now that you’re hooked up, the rig is incredibly simple to fish with, just like it was setting it up. You have two options realistically, however, I’d recommend only one and that is anchor fishing. You can use cut or live bait with this setup, and just cast your line and let it sit on the bottom.
Technically you could also drift with this setup, but I would highly recommend a better drifting rig, like a Santee Cooper rig. A Santee Cooper rig looks very similar, but it includes a peg float between your hook and sinker so that your bait is suspended.
Wrapping Up
After reading this article, anglers should understand how to use this rig. To go over it again, if you’re using the pre-rigged version, you only need to tie your main line to the swivel and cast your line. If you’re fishing with a rig that comes with empty snap swivels, follow the instructions we discussed above.