Tater Tot Stubby Blade™ Rigging Guide

Start Here: The Basic Tie-Up

The Tater Tot slides onto your leader like a soft spinner blade. No clevis, nothing to tune. Rig it once and it runs.

1. Tie on your hook. Size 2 treble for salmon. Tie it to the terminal end of your leader.
2. Slide on two beads. 5 to 6 mm round beads. The beads are the bearing, they give the body clearance to spin free of the hook.
3. Slide on the Tater Tot, fin toward the flasher. Run the leader through the channel with the fin pointing forward, away from the hooks.
4. Tie off to a bead chain swivel and clip that to your flasher.

Fall Chinook

This is the Buoy 10 and fall Columbia rig. Behind a 360 the Tot darts and spins, and that aggressive trigger is what ocean and river kings can't resist.

Want more flash back there? A hoochie works in the fall too, rigged like the Coho setup below.

Spring Chinook

Same rig as the fall fish, 360 and all. The difference is a cured coon shrimp riding on the hooks.

The coonie, quick and easy. There are plenty of ways to run a coonie. Ours: cured shrimp right on the trebles behind the lure, with a couple beads between the Tot and the hook so the body keeps spinning free with the bait on. Double hooks work under the shrimp when they want more profile.

For extra finicky fish, a triangle flasher gives a softer spin when they want less commotion.

Coho

Coho love the wobble and the whip. Run the basic rig behind any flasher, and try a shorter leader to get more action back there. When the bite wants more flash and profile, add a hoochie:

Beads on both sides of the hoochie keep everything riding free so the body still spins.

Steelhead

In clear water, rig it without a flasher and tip it with a coon shrimp. Low disturbance finesse. Or run it behind a 360 when you want to call fish in from further out.

Yes, it plunks. Weight on a dropper off a slider, then a 30 inch or so leader back to the Tot:

The corkie rides between two beads behind the Tot and the whole thing keeps spinning in the current. Smaller hooks usually do better for steelhead. We have taken summer chrome off the bank on this rig, and customers have too.

Kokanee

Behind a small dodger at slow kokanee speeds the Tot wobbles tight. Deadly on landlocked sockeye. Run it solo when they're spooky, and tip the hooks the way you always do.

Walleye

Slide it onto your worm harness right where the spinner blade usually goes, crawler behind it, and pull it at harness speeds behind a bottom bouncer. Walleye, bass, perch, and bluegill have all come over the rail on the same rig. If you pull harnesses, you already know how to fish it.

Got a Rig We Should Add?

There are more ways to fish this thing than we have tried. Tag our page or hashtag #CaughtOnATot with your setup and what it caught, and we'll share it. More fun, more fish.

Have fun out there.