Shakespeare SALT Bottom Hugger Rig

Overview

The Shakespeare SALT Bottom Hugger Rig is a ready-tied 3-hook bottom-fishing rig built to keep your bait presentations fishing close to the seabed. It forms part of Shakespeare's SALT range of ready-made sea rigs and uses a paternoster-style construction with three hooklengths.

The standout feature is its weighted metal booms, which are a step up from standard plastic booms. This added weight helps hold the hooklengths down near the bottom, even when fishing in stronger current.

Each hooklength connects to its boom via a small rotating swivel, allowing the snood to rotate freely and helping to reduce line twist during a session.

Perfect For

This rig is aimed squarely at beach and shore anglers who want their baits presented hard on the bottom rather than moving around higher in the water. It's well suited to flounder and plaice fishing, with retailer listings also describing it as a flatfish paternoster particularly suitable for sole.

It's also a practical choice for other bottom-feeding sea species such as dab, given its bottom-hugging design. The weighted booms make it a solid option when fishing marks with stronger current, where lighter rigs might lift and tangle.

Technical Insight

The short hooklengths are the defining design choice here — by keeping the snoods short, the rig minimises how far baits can drift up off the seabed, which is exactly what's needed when flatfish are feeding tight to the bottom. The weighted metal booms do the heavy lifting in current, anchoring the rig's presentation rather than letting it swing about.

The small rotating swivels at each boom connection are a simple but effective detail, letting the snood spin independently and cutting down on the line twist that can otherwise build up over a session of casting and retrieving. With a choice of size 2, 4 or 6 hooks, anglers can match hook size to bait size and target species, from larger baits for bigger flatfish down to finer presentations.