They are used totally diferently. An RI rigged eel is dragged around through the rocks like a live eel. The skin plugs are worked at or near the surface. Rigged eels can be used almost anywhere while Skin plugs need certain conditions to be most effective. If I could only use 1 , I'd choose the rigged eels. However , under the right conditions , the skin plugs will get some big fish to come off the bottom and hit the lure.
About the time it takes to rig eels. I find it takes about an hour to do 3 but only 3 hours to do 24. If you do a lot of them at once they aren't too bad per eel. They are very durable too. Except for bluefish , you can usually make one last a long time. Of course the blues chew up your 15 minutes work in 1 second!
