The Alabama rig is the hottest thing going now. The other day, I tried it at Lake Guntersville, and my five best fish weighed between 27 and 28 pounds, including a 7-6 that I put on the scales before letting it go.

Whenever bass are feeding on schooling shad, the Alabama rig is going to be a killer – if you can get all that weight out there. Some guys say that 65- or 80-pound-test braid is the best line to use, but I’ve found that 25-pound-test Berkley 100% Fluorocarbon draws more strikes, and I can handle the weight just as well. The reason I switched from braid is that after I caught a pretty good fish, the next time I cast, I wound up breaking off the rig because the braid had buried into itself on the reel spool. So I switched over to fluorocarbon and haven’t had any problems since.

The other day, I had a pair of half-ounce heads on the bottom two swivels of the Alabama rig, a half-ounce Sworming Hornet Fish Head Spin in the center and two quarter-ounce heads on top. I had Berkley 5-inch Hollow Bellies on all five arms, so that’s about 4 ounces all told. I upsized to an Abu Garcia Revo Toro, and use it with a heavy-action 7-foot, 11-inch flipping rod. It works for me.

— Straight Talk pro Scott Canterbury of Springville, Ala.