So found myself buying gear today at academy ( on my personal cc so my other half will never know , of course muahahaaaa) and I'd seen and heard about this Santee float rig I've been wanting to try so I grab all my circle hooks , swivels ect and some cigar floats to try this thing out well I get to digging around on the Internet and there's two ways to rig it one is with a three way swivel with the float above the swivel and the other is a regular swivel with the weight above the swivel and the float is after that . Is there any real difference or preference between the two ?

Option 1 has always worked good for me...used to use option 2 when I used to bank fish the trinity river, it performs good in current. Option 1 works much better for me when fishing the lake. It allows the fish to feel less resistance when they take your bait.

Option 1. Make sure you snell your hook. Also, I always use 8/0 hooks and Academy usually doesn't have those.

Thanks gato and Brian fish in the lake and it been pretty calm latley so I'll go with option 1 plus I already set it up that way anyways lol . Was very disappointed in academy no 3 way swivels and didn't have the gamakatsu hooks I wanted either had to make do with eagle claw ,guess when I go back for more gear have to drive out to cabelas

Oh any suggestions or opinions on how long the leader should be ? Or how far away from the hook the float should be . Right now it's about a 2ft leader and about 8 in from the hook I figured this was a descent place to start until I found my sweet spot

24 to 30 inch leader with float about 3 or 4 inches above hook. I am switching over to 6/0 this time of year for hooks.

I bought 6/0 and 5/0 ,start off with 5/0 and see where it goes .