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Bottom Contact Lures are lures designed to maintain maximum contact with the bottom.
Lure contact categories, albeit not a common categorization, helps understand the lure’s common location in the water column along with what the lure’s design enables it to contact. The four categories used are: surface contact lures, minimal contact lures, cover contact lures and bottom contact lures.
Bottom Contact Lures are important to:
Drop Shot lures are bottom contact lures known for keeping the soft plastics off the bottom generally from 1 to 3 feet and for their subtle, weightless, natural looking, suspended forage-like lure action. Dropshot are generally, but not always, used for fishing slow and fishing deep.
Texas Rig Lures are bottom contact lures known for their weedless set up called texas-rigged, for targeting cover, often heavy cover, and the versatility of soft plastics that can be used. It is also known for its versatility in lure weights from no weight to over 1 oz for punch casting.
Ned Rig Lures are bottom contact known for light weight, low profile, slow fishing, catch on the fall and for its typically using small vertical worm soft plastic.
Neko Rig Lures are bottom contact lures known for having a worm stand straight resulting in a tail-based worm-like lure action [NL]. Some suggest neko rig stand up presentation is good for soft bottom scenarios as well as hard bottom and most cover.
Carolina Rigs are bottom contact lures known as a natural presentation created by dragging a fairly heavy weight across the bottom with a soft plastic that follows some distance behind on slack line leader allowing the soft plastic to jumps and dart around nearby not on the bottom. Carolina Rigs can be fished at varying speeds, varying depths with a wide variety of soft plastics.
Wobble Heads, also commonly called a Swing Jig Heads, are bottom contact lures known for their erratic side to side lure action enabled by a single hook with a soft plastic that freely swings from the jig head when coming into contact with hard bottom and cover.
Flipping Jigs, or flippin jigs, are bottom contact lures known for their large profile and for targeting heavy grass cover. Variants include punching jigs, pitching jigs, heavy cover jigs, structure jigs and arkie style jig heads all have similar profiles and are fished similarly. Historically, flipping jigs were known for flip casting, but now it is more common to pitch casting a flipping jig.
Football Jigs are bottom contact lures known to have erratic lure action due to the jig head design and from bouncing off hard bottom and rock cover with a drag retrieve. Albeit several lure types use a football style jig head, football jigs are generally unique for a skirted lure as it is dragged over hard bottom.
Hair Jigs are bottom contact lures known for their natural, subtle puff and flare lure action. Hair jigs’ lure action are generally considered unique as it results from the natural hair or feathers materials generally used to make a hair jig. Hair jigs are also known for their small profile, no weedguard and their ability to be fished shallow and deep.
Flutter Spoons are bottom contact lures known for producing a dying bait fish, flashing, fluttering, falling lure action typically produced with a shiny large spoon lure as it flutters (falling action) to the bottom. Flutter Spoons are also known for their large profile and their somewhat unique ability to fished fast with several slack line vertical drops per presentation.
