How To

How to Rig Ballyhoo for Offshore Trolling

No rigging wire. No bait springs. No chin weights. Four steps and a couple of minutes, and your ballyhoo will troll the way you always thought they should.

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What makes this different

Most ways of rigging ballyhoo for trolling ask you to build something. Pin rigs want rigging wire wrapped around the bill and through the gills. Chin weights want a separate piece of hardware. Both take practice, and both take time you'd rather spend fishing.

This method skips all of it. The bait prep is minimal, the rigging is already tied, and the whole thing comes together in a few steps — a practical alternative to pin-rigging or to buying expensive pre-rigged ballyhoo.

What you don't need

No rigging wire. No bait springs. No chin weights. A thawed ballyhoo, a two-hook rig, and a TrollTrue lure.

What you do need is a decent bait. Offshore fishing is too expensive to gamble on cheap ballyhoo — look for clear eyes, minimal blood, and baits that haven't been refrozen.

The method

Rigging the ballyhoo

Four steps, in order. Step two is the one that separates a bait that swims from a bait that drags.

Step 01

Prep the ballyhoo

Bill clipped to half an inch, digestive tract emptied.

Thaw it thoroughly. A partially thawed ballyhoo holds a bow in its body and will not troll well, no matter what else you do right.

Clip or break off the bill, leaving about half an inch. That half inch matters later — it's what protrudes from the front of the lure.

Empty the digestive tract. Run your thumb down the ballyhoo starting just behind the gill plate, pushing the contents out through the anal opening.

Step 02

Limber the ballyhoo

Work it back and forth in a snake-like pattern.

Work the ballyhoo back and forth in a snaking motion until the body moves freely. This is what gives the bait its action in the water.

Don't mash the flesh or try to break the backbone. Both shorten how long the bait lasts and neither improves the action.

Step 03

Attach the rigging

In under the chin, out the middle of the head just forward of the eyes.

Insert the nose hook under the chin of the ballyhoo and bring it out through the middle of the head, just forward of the eyes.

Let the trailer hook dangle freely. There's no need to embed it in the bait — that's one more job this method removes.

Step 04

Seat the lure

Half an inch of bill protruding from the front of the lure.

Slide the lure down the leader and onto the ballyhoo's head. Make sure the barb of the nose hook slides up into the slot on the lure — that's what locks the two together.

Let about half an inch of bill protrude from the opening at the front of the lure.

That's it. Your ballyhoo is ready to troll.

Where the action comes from

TrollTrue Ballyhoo Lures

The prep above gets the bait limber. What makes it swim is the keel weight moulded into the lure — it holds the ballyhoo upright and tracking straight instead of rolling over, so all that limbered body works side to side the way a live baitfish does. That's the action fish can't leave alone, and it's not something bait prep alone will give you.

Shop Ballyhoo Lures

Save yourself the trouble

Things you can skip

A lot of ballyhoo rigging advice involves steps that don't hurt but don't help either. None of these are necessary here.

Clipping the fins

Makes no difference to how the bait swims. Leave them on and save the time.

Brining

Useful in some rigging methods for toughening the bait. It isn't doing anything for this one.

Removing the eyes

Harmless, but it contributes nothing to the bait's performance.

Breaking the backbone

Actively counterproductive — it shortens how long the ballyhoo holds together behind the boat.

Once the bait is rigged, the next thing that matters is how it goes in the water. See deploying the bait into the spread, and in rough conditions, how and when to secure the lure.

Questions?

Talk to someone who fishes these

Call or text — send a photo of your rigged bait and we'll tell you straight away whether it'll swim.

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