Blog / Gear

Shop trolling lures

Gear

Rod Riggers: What They Are and How to Use Them

An inexpensive pair of metal tubes that adds about ten feet to your spread. Most anglers have never considered them.

By David Rose, September 2026

Mahi hooked on rod riggers trolling in clean water

01 — Start here

The gear almost nobody considers

Ask a room full of offshore anglers how to get their baits farther apart and you will hear about outriggers, spreader bars, planer boards and where to sit the flat lines. You will rarely hear anyone mention rod riggers.

That is the whole story here. Rod riggers are not complicated, not expensive and not new. They are simply not on most people’s list of options, which means a lot of boats are trolling a narrower spread than they need to for no reason other than the idea never came up.

The short version

A rod rigger drops into a gunwale rod holder and holds the rod out perpendicular to the boat instead of angled back. One on each side widens the spread by roughly ten feet and puts those baits outside the wake. They are inexpensive, they suit a short-handed crew, and they have one real limit — drag.

02 — The hardware

What a rod rigger actually is

A rod rigger is a piece of one-piece metal that goes into the gunwale rod holder you already have. It does one job: instead of letting the rod angle back toward the stern the way a rod holder normally does, it holds the rod out perpendicular to the boat, and it locks into the holder so it stays in that position.

Your rod does not change. The butt goes into the rod rigger, and everything above that — the reel, the line, the leader, the bait — is exactly what you were already fishing. There is no clip, no release, no separate line to run. The rod simply points sideways instead of backward.

That simplicity is most of the appeal. There is nothing to rig, nothing to learn and nothing to go wrong in the middle of a bite.

03 — What it buys you

About ten feet of extra width

With a rod rigger on each side, the spread widens by about ten feet. Put that number next to the boat it is going on. A centre console with an eight-foot beam is spreading baits across eight feet of water. Ten more feet is not an improvement — it is a different spread.

The number that matters

One rod rigger per side adds roughly ten feet of width. On an eight-foot boat, that is more width than the boat has.

Width is only half of it. The other half is clean water. Baits dragged close behind the transom are working in the wake — churned, aerated, hard for a fish to see into. Push those same baits out past the edge of the wash and they are swimming in undisturbed water where a fish can actually see them coming.

There is also the crew question. A lot of offshore fishing happens solo or with one other person aboard, and every piece of gear that needs tending is a real cost when there are two hands on the boat. A rod rigger needs no tending. You set the rod in it and fish.

Rod rigger seated in a gunwale rod holder holding a trolling rod perpendicular to the boat

The outside lines are working in clean water, past the edge of the wake.

04 — Position

Where the rod rigger lines belong

A boat running rod riggers is usually a boat that has no outriggers, or has them and is not using them that day. Either way, the answer is the same: the rod rigger lines are the outermost lines in the spread, and the farthest back. They are the widest thing you have, so they take the widest position.

Long rigger and short rigger are not rod rigger terms

This is worth getting straight, because the words get borrowed. On a big boat running two lines off each outrigger, the outer of the two is the long rigger position and the inner one is the short rigger position. Those terms describe outrigger positions on a boat carrying four rigger lines.

A pair of rod riggers gives you one line per side. There is no long and short to choose between. There is just the outside line, and it goes as far out and as far back as you can comfortably fish it.

How the rest of the spread fills in around those two lines is a bigger question than this post — the number of lines, the staggering, what goes where. That is covered in the mahi trolling spread for small boats. If you are running directional spreader bars as well, they and the rod riggers are doing related work and the two should be planned together rather than separately.

05 — Before you fish one

Lanyard the rod

A rod rigger locks into the rod holder, but a rod holder is not a vice. I have had one rotate in the gunwale on me. Nothing was lost, but it was a reminder of what the failure looks like: the rigger turns, the rod turns with it, and suddenly a loaded rod is pointing somewhere you did not put it.

I always secure the rod with a lanyard. Every time, on every rod rigger, regardless of what is on the other end. It costs nothing and it removes the only version of this that ends with gear in the water.

Do this every time

Lanyard the rod to the boat. A rod rigger holds a rod well; it is not a permanent mount, and the one time it rotates is the one time you will wish the rod was tied off.

06 — The limit

Know how much drag you are asking it to hold

Here is the honest constraint, and it is the reason I would not put a rod rigger on every rod on the boat. Because the rigger is seated in a holder rather than bolted down, there is a limit to how much torque I would trust it with. A steady sideways pull on a rod standing out perpendicular to the boat is exactly the load that makes something rotate.

So rod riggers are for baits that pull easily. A surface bait tracking behind you at trolling speed is well within what one will hold all day. A bait generating serious drag is not.

The clearest example is a planer. A planer is designed to pull hard — that is the whole mechanism — and I would not run one off a rod rigger. If you want a planer in the spread, put it on a rod in a conventional holder where the load is pointed the way the holder expects it. Planers are their own technique with their own setup, covered in planer fishing for wahoo.

The rule

Light-pulling baits on the rod riggers. Anything that fights you — a planer above all — goes on a rod in a normal holder.

Free one-page chart

Take these numbers with you

Trolling speed by bait and by species, on one page that fits your phone screen.

You’ll also get Notes from Offshore — one rigging tip a week. Unsubscribe anytime.

07 — Buying a pair

There is not much to choose between them

Rod riggers are one-piece metal. There is no mechanism, no moving part, nothing to fail. Across the brands you will find, the differences are small enough that I would not spend much time comparing them, and a good pair costs less than a hundred dollars.

The one feature I would actually look for is a rubber lining. A lined rigger holds the rod more securely and protects the rod finish from bare metal. It is a small upgrade and it is worth having.

What to look for

One-piece metal construction
A rubber lining inside, for grip and to protect the rod
A fit that seats properly in the rod holders you actually have

That is the entire buying decision. For the price of a couple of lures you widen your spread by ten feet, put two baits in clean water and add nothing to the workload. That is a better return than most gear on the boat.

What goes on the end of those two lines

Keel-weighted trolling lures that swim straight in clean water, rigged and ready to fish.

No spin

The keel weight keeps the bait tracking straight instead of rolling, which is the whole point of putting it in clean water.

No pin rigging

Rigged and ready to run, so a short-handed crew is not standing over a rigging table.

Handmade in the USA

Every lure poured, weighted and checked before it ships.

Shop trolling lures

How fast to troll

Keep reading

Item added to your cart