That light tackle blog post has a lot of good in it, plus a bit of....meh.
1- His caveat about using light tackle in low surf conditions is right on. Indeed, I said as much. I fish both ways. A stiff bass spinning rod or steelhead rod is enough. His comment about coffee-grinder sized reels also. Nothing bigger than a steelhead reel is necessary, because you are running braid and it will carry way more than you can throw.
2- Carolina rig is a great way to fish, but you are only fishing one hook. No thrill of the double !
3- With a Carolina rig you are stuck using swivels. With a bottom rig, you just tie the leader to your mainline, uni-to-uni. Goes right through your guides if you tie it right and haven't gone so light on your gear that you get tiny guides. This is faster and easier for changing up the weight or re-rigging.
4- He calls for a flouro leader. Waste of money in the surf. The water is too cloudy and the fish aren't leader shy. Perch in the surf make a split second decision to attack the bait from farther away than they can see a mono leader in turbulent water.
5- Again on the rigging, you don't even need a small tackle box like he shows if you avoid the Carolina rig. A pack of hooks, a small spool of leader material, and 2 each disk sinkers in 1, 2, 3 oz. All in one pocket. Swivels are just impossible to manage loose in a pocket.
6- Tides. Meh. They bite at all tides. See his part about holes and troughs. Those will appear on each beach in different tides. Sometimes the hole you want is only visible or reachable at low tide. Or high. Or in between. Its not a matter of which tide, but which tide for which beach. And in fact, if you find a good outbound rip with a lighter weight that gets to the bottom but won't hold, you can take advantage of that to let your gear drift out to water you can't cast to, before you being your slow stop-and-go retrieve.
7- 14# braid. This is important. Do not use braid that thin. It will cut like a knife because it is so thin. 30# braid won't cut your fingers to ribbons, is easier to tie with, and casts just fine. High vis or even just white will give you a better idea where your gear is and how its moving.
One of these days I am going to play with using a slider to rig Carolina, with dipsey sinkers in 1/2-1oz sizes clipped directly to the slider. That would make it easy to adjust the weight. But you still end up only running one hook.
