When and where to use

The running ledger is the default rig anywhere you need a stealthy presentation on the bottom. It's not for distance work and it's not for snaggy ground. It is for putting a bait in the strike zone and letting the fish take it without alarm.

Best targets

• Bass: estuaries, river mouths and inshore reefs. A long flowing snood with a live prawn or peeler crab is devastating.
• Smoothhound: gravel and shingle banks on a flooding tide. Hardback crab or squid head on a 3/0.
• Cod and pollack: in calm conditions over mixed ground where you're fishing close in.
• Eels and pouting: any time you want a presented bait without bite-shyness.

Lead weight

Match the lead to hold bottom in the prevailing tide, not your usual surf weight. Often you can go lighter than you'd expect, 2 to 4 oz is plenty inshore. A plain bomb or a watch lead works; you don't usually need grip wires unless the tide is ripping.

Where to avoid it

Rough ground (the snood snags, and there's no rotten bottom to save it). Long-range surf casting (the dropping lead tangles in flight, use a clipped paternoster instead).