In mid August I bought some weedless hooks and 1.5" grubs from Charlie Brewer's Slider Company and have been giving them a good work out.

It really is nice to be able to fish the really rough cover without getting hung so much. You still get hung when the line and jig get in the right cracks, but it's often you can wiggle it out. Another way I get it loose is using my anchor pole with a carabineer tied on the end. I'll put up more about that later on.

The weedless rig makes tight line fishing a whole lot easier. Dragging it through the water Tennessee style or vertical both have less hangs. It does seem that it requires more of a hook set though and will take some getting used to.

Using the weedless hooks has exposed to me what I would call the "puppy pull" behavior in crappie. I'm seeing fish pull and travel pretty far like they were well hooked only to get off. When I check the bait sometimes the barb hasn't been even exposed leading me to conclude that they can hang on for a good while without barb penetration.

Some of the fish that I used to think were not hooked well probably had just been hanging on with their bite and had not been set properly. Here is Charlie Jr. showing how to rig the bait.