Blueback Herring BTD 3-fly Vegan Rig (3 and 4-INCH TEASER & 7-INCH TRAILER)

 
The popularization of meat rigs skyrocketed across the Great Lakes over the past decade. Originally developed and adopted from West Coast trolling tactics by Lake Ontario chinook salmon trollers from Oswego, New York, Great Lakes trollers utilized cut-plug herring systems connected to longer 40- to 54-inch hard mono leaders via 11-inch paddle-style flashers to present the perfect slow roll. Bait selection perferentially changed to Pacific herring as the main bait of choice while others incorporatred - alewives, ballyhoo, blueback herring, and anchoives - common pelagic baitfish that are nutritionally enriched with oils to attract predatory salmonids. Eventually, trolling bait with flashers accquired the terminology "meat rigs". Nowadays meat rigs feature a subset of 2-3 teaser flies (e.g. Howie-style flashy flies) interspaced approximately 4-7 inches in between each teaser connected to the diaboiccal hard plastic bait-holding head. Teaser flies create and represent the illusion of schooling pelagic baitfish such as alewives for example in the Great Lakes or Pacific herring in the ocean. In scenarios where anglers dislike bait for their open water trolling preferences, the recent development of "vegan rig" systems was implemented. Teaser flies are interspaced at identical distances of the same length to represent similar size structure of a school of bait. After its popularization across the Great Lakes, Musky Mike Flies decided to take full advantage of the recently favored technique and develop the ultimate vegan rig system never seen in freshwater or saltwater. With larger size classes of alewives in the 6- to 8-inch spectrum, the second Musky Mike Flies vegan rig consists of three flies: 3-inch and 4-inch Bucktail Deceiver (BTD) teaser flies in blueback herring color scheme followed by a 7-inch blueback herring trailer fly. Each vegan rigging system comes with a 6mm pearl bead behind each teaser. Pegged toothpicks used on traditional vegan rigs often get waterlogged and slip out thus causing teasers to slide uncontrollably on the flurocarbon leader. A stronger bead-stopping system was developed by Musky Mike Flies. A 6-turn sliding nail knot of 80-pound Dacron positions each trailer fly in place, yet can be easily adjusted to slide to custom-preferred distance in between each teaser. The 7-inch trailer fly comes equipped and rigged with double #4/0 Gamakatsu stinger hooks uni-knot snelled. Leader system features a 40-inch 50-pound flurocarbon to create enough whip and power to turn over the flies with superb proficiency and repesent different behavorial strategies and swimming speeds of alewives or herring when trolled at various speeds. In essence, this is the most realistic "vegan rig" system ever developed for Great Lakes and Pacific salmon trolling for trophy-sized king salmon!!