I'm no expert either, troutmasta, but I stuck with it and sort of figured it out. Best setup I could work with was to set up like drift fishing for steelhead. 3 way swivel, 4-6" of pencil lead right off the swivel, and then about 20" leader to hook baited with fresh sand shrimp. Had a heck of a time getting those sand shrimp to stay on. Finally tried some of the strechy string and got it to work ok. I tried pyramid wt and the flat round wt but both got hung up a lot worse than the pencil lead. Also longer leaders tended to get hung up worse. I am going to try golf balls for wt next time. Small hole and put in thread-in eyes. See if they bounce off rocks better. All in all its fun, just bring lots, lots, lots of tackle.