The 2011 professional bass fishing season is coming to an end. There are dozens of pro tours across the country but the two best known are probably the Bass Angler Sportsman Society’s (B.A.S.S.) Bassmaster Pro Circuit and the Walmart FLW Tour. Both feature numerous divisions and hold tournaments all summer long. Many of the top money winners fish in both tours.

Pro bass fishing traditionally involves keeping your catch alive to be released at the end of the day. There are prizes for the single largest fish, but the top prize always goes to the angler with the heaviest combined catch. Dead fish usually carry a penalty or are not eligible at all. As a result, bass lures are designed to cause the least amount of damage possible to the fish and anglers use tackle that is designed to get the fish in the boat as quickly as possible so as to avoid wearing the fish out and decreasing the chance of survival. Most bass pros do not use a landing net since the fish’s essential slime coating can be damaged when it comes in contact with a net.

The latest bass fishing breakthrough is known as the Alabama Rig. It was recently credited with winning the FLW Tour finale at Lake Guntersville Alabama for world famous bass pro Paul Elias. His four-day catch of 20 fish weighed a whopping 102 pounds and 8 ounces. Just shy of the all time record of 106 pounds and 10 ounces and an incredible 17 pounds 13 ounces more than the second place winner. In most tournaments the difference between first and second place is usually only a matter of ounces. Obviously the Alabama Rig is extremely effective.

The rig is basically a scaled-down version of the umbrella rig that has been used for years by saltwater anglers seeking striped bass. The saltwater umbrella rig has always been trolled behind a downrigger or weighted down to keep it running deep. The system looks like an umbrella without the cloth and at the end of each spoke a leader is attached with an artificial lure at the end. The system effectively presents a small school of baitfish to the quarry at once rather than just one lure. The most commonly used lures are rubber shad bodies with lead heads. The Alabama Rig is the same thing scaled down small enough that it can be cast with a medium-action rod.

There are several drawbacks to the rig that the pros are downplaying. First, it is useless in weeds. It must be used in open water with no obstacles to get caught up on. Elias has released a video of the Alabama Rig in action and in all the video clips he’s fishing around bridge pilings or in open water. The other concern is the safety of the fish. In Elias’ video there are several instances where the fish gets foul hooked by one of the lures, as well as having one hook in its lip. It appears that Elias is able to remove the wayward hook but there’s little doubt that a foul-hooked fish is more susceptible than one that’s lip hooked only. The rig also has the potential of hooking more than one fish at a time and up until now tournament bass fishermen have been restricted to fishing only one lure per rod, one rod at a time.

Is this new rig a real breakthrough? Probably not; it’s just a new version of an old saltwater rig. Is it cheating by using more than one lure on a line? Maybe. It’s definitely not up to code in the eyes of the International Gamefish Association, the foremost governing body for record catches.