The 3 Best Ways to Fish a Ned Rig - Bass Fishing

what's going on guys this is gene jensen and i want to talk to you about one of my favorite finesse rigs that i use when the bite is terribly tough and that's the ned rig [Music] all right so the ned rig is a great finesse rig it's one of those baits that really when the bite is tough that's what i'm gonna go to first it used to be the shaky head it used to be the drop shot now it is the ned rig because this thing not only does it catch a lot of fish it catches any fish i've caught catfish and walleye and all kinds of other stuff on one it's just a fun bait or a fun rig to fish and what i want to talk about is all the ins and outs about the ned rig for anybody really all right so the first thing um is what's the equipment what is a ned rig basically a ned rig originally known as the midwest finesse rig and um and now they call it the ned rig the original one that i fished was the z-man ned rig which is what this is right here it is a uh finesse shroom's jig head looks just like that tiny little thin wire hook a little bit of keeper right here my favorite uh jig head their favorite size i like to use is 1 10th ounce but if you guys are buying other brands a 1 8 1 16 ounce will be just fine all right so the baits that you can pair this with are are just in numerous there's tons of companies that make ned rig stuff now strike king missile baits you name it everybody's got one uh basically what it is is what you're going to be using is just little small baits this is a finesse trd this is the original one and then z-man's got a whole bunch of other uh baits that are for the ned rig and then another one that i like to use is the the missile mates uh ned bomb and we'll talk a little bit more about that in just a minute and why i choose that over a lot of other ones but this is my go-to this is the normal trd i have four or five different colors i use natural colors and dark colors and i just go with it from there and i really typically will catch at least one fish on a tough day so real quick i'm just gonna show you how to rig it i'm gonna throw the trd on and all i do is you just run it straight through the center run it till it just barely starts to bend over the hook or it bends over about halfway and then come out the side try to keep it as straight as you can and then just push it up on here and if you want this to last all day long the good thing about the z-man plastics is their elastic and you they last a long time plus they float a lot we'll talk more about that uh later on but you can glue it just pull it back just a little bit put a drop of super glue on and push it back up and it'll glue on there and it will last all day long and hun you know tons and tons of fish you can have a blast with it but anyway that's how you rig it pretty plain and simple uh some of you gonna ask about the weedless ones with the weed guards i don't typically use those because i miss a lot of fish on them so i i almost always just use this and just risk getting hung up but uh to me it's no big deal i guess but anyway all right so let's talk about rods and reels all right so the rod is pretty critical this is a technique and a rig that you do not want to fish on a bait caster you're throwing really light baits with really light line and a bait caster is just going to be nothing but issues trying to cast it so a spinning rod medium light or a medium spinning rod i prefer a medium this is a seven foot three inch which is probably the maximum length that i would throw but it's a seven foot three inch medium it's a 13 fishing fake black um the reel is either going to be a 2000 to a 3000 spool reel i prefer a 3 000 size spool just because it performs better with really light line i really like tackle but with braid i've noticed that it really doesn't make much of a difference to me if i was putting full fluorocarbon on a reel or full mono i would want to have a larger spool just because there's a lot less issues with that when you're fishing ultra light stuff and light techniques uh line i got a 20 pound test main line this is seaguar smackdown attached by an fg knot to a to a fluorocarbon leader this is uh this is seaguar gold label eight pound test fluoro and and i tell you this fg knot right here if you guys are scared of learning how to tie this knot all i have to say is you it's one of those knots that it's difficult to learn but once you get it down you will not use another connecting knot so i recommend that even if you feel like you're as dumb as a football bat i recommend that you guys sit down and learn how to tie this knot because it has been nothing but wonderful since i sat down took me about two days of tying it and i just i busted my butt to be able to learn it but it's been well worth the effort all right so let's take this out on the water i want to show you guys the three different techniques that i use the most i want to show you guys the different places that you'll fish them and i really want to talk about the details about how to fish the ned rig so stay tuned let's go fishing [Music] all right so before i forget i know the question is going to come up when do you use a an elastic you know a high-floating uh really buoyant elastic bait over a normal plastisol like the the uh like the missile baits uh ned bomb well what i the way i think of it is if i'm gonna fish a technique that keeps that bait on the bottom i want to have one that's a high floating bait because it will keep that bait standing it just has a better action on the bottom and it's it's typically well it's definitely not going to going to roll over if you use a plastisol bait and you're only fishing your bait on the bottom it's going to roll on its side it's going to get snagged up a whole lot more it's just going to be it's not going to work as good it'll still work but it's not going to work as good as the z-man baits now when i want to use a bait that has that's like a regular soft plastic made with plastisol i am going to this one i'm fishing uh techniques where it's up in the water column more it's i'll have one that i'm going to talk about in a minute where i bounce off the bottom i use it i use a uh specifically the ned balm for that technique and then also when you're kind of swimming it through the water so let's talk about those techniques the first one is the one that i use when it's tough in the summertime and the fish are on the bottom and it is my only bottom technique that i use with a ned rig all right so the technique is basically as slow as you possibly can you let that 1 10th ounce weight jig head fall to the bottom this is not a technique where you want to fish it around cover like in grass or in brush piles just a flat spot where the bluegill like the you know where the bluegill will be spawning and just a shallow flat is what the what i'm looking for but i let it sink to the bottom and i'm literally just dragging it on the bottom but i'm doing it with the rod so look how slow i'm reeling this is a five three to one or five two to one gear ratio reel and i'm literally i wanna keep that little light bait with that ned rig on the bottom and what it's doing as it's going along the bottom you're snagging little places on the bottom and that bait's just popping up and it's swimming like this and it's popping up but it's as that as that weight hits it literally goes tweak and it pops up in the bass's face and they will pick it up no matter what it is a heck of a cool reaction bite and then all you do for the hook set is you just reel into them and then you just tighten up okay so that's one way all right so for these next two techniques i'm going to switch over to the ned bomb and i'm going to show you why now when the ned bomb is swimming through the water you see that little flat tail right there gets you a lot of vibration and it gives you some rock as it's falling or as it's swimming okay and so the first technique i'm gonna the next one i'm gonna next technique that i'm going to talk about is the lift and drop okay or a lifting glide you see you hear it you know you hear it called several different things but same thing you cast it out let it sink to the bottom and if i just got a bite i'm going to be laughing all right and you're just a lot of people would think that it's like a lift and then you drop your line black back down to a slack line that's not what this is you're going to literally lift it up just a little bit you're just going to lift it up a foot maybe a foot and a half and then you're gonna leave it lifted okay and that's what i'm doing is i'm i'm lifting it up and i'm just gonna leave my rod tip up there so the bait comes up and then it glides back down towards me and away from the fish and it and it makes the fish see and they're like i got to get to it before it gets away and as it's gliding down it becomes a lot easier target form and then that flat tail causes it to rock is what i do so i'm lifting and i'm dropping and this is what i do 90 of the time when i want to get bit i'm lifting and i'm dropping you don't have to have a tight line but you want to have a semi-tight line you don't want slack laying on the water when it's falling all right so i want to talk a little bit about line diameter or line size this is a technique that you can go from four pound test to about eight pound i don't like to fish any heavier than eight i feel like it kills the action of the bait it really is it just doesn't seem to work as good until you get into those lighter lines now with that you've got to really make sure that you've got your drag set right so what i do is i'll get it see that's way too tight i'll loosen my drag up really really loose to where it's super easy to pull that line out and then i'll go three or four clicks in and that's it now the temptation when doing this is going to be to fish it like a shaky head let it fall to the bottom and shake it let it fall the bottom and shake it i have rarely ever had a good day doing that i've caught fish doing it but i've almost always got them fired up by just doing the doing the lift and drop and so i've got a school of fish or some i think i've got a school of fish out here in front of me i'm gonna try to catch a fish on it real quick all right so one of the things that i guess one of the myths of a ned rig is the neg rig only catches small fish let me tell you something when the fishing's bad you'll take anything i mean you will literally take anything and it does it catches little fish but it'll also catch big fish you drop this sucker in front of a big fish he's not gonna just sit there and say hmm that's not big enough i'm not gonna take it so it goes sucks it in you set the hook and you got a big fish and you got a good fight on your hands too another thing is that i'm thinking about is rod angle you notice i don't have my rod pointed at the bait i have my rod up at about 10 or 11 o'clock and i'm literally only moving it about a foot and and that way you feel the bite you can make a good hook set but another thing it just doesn't mess with the action much it doesn't mess with that fall if you have that that rod tip high it'll fall nice and natural all right so the next technique that i use is for suspended fish and this thing works great for suspended fish um and this is when i typically will only use something that's got some type of a kick and tail either the the ned bomb or the um let me grab it real quick the hula sticks something that's got a little tail on it that's going to make a little bit of action when i'm swimming it because basically you figure out what depth the fish are at you count your bait down to that depth and as soon as it gets that depth you just start to reel really slow let me show you guys well first of all let me show you what i do to a net to a ned bomb before i cast it out a little tricks that nobody's going to show you but of course i will is i take that tail on that ned bomb and i take my rusty stickers or scissors there we go i need to grease those up and i give it a little snip right there just cut it just a little bit and that'll catch enough water to where it makes that thing swim a whole lot better and this is only when i'm swimming in it swimming it so say the fish are at eight feet and it takes this thing about nine seconds to get or about probably about seven and a half to eight seconds to get eight feet deep so i'm gonna cast it out out there count one thousand two one thousand three one thousand in my head all the way to eight seconds and i'm gonna sit there and i'm going to go and i'm just going to reel it back to the boat maybe pop a little bit but usually i'm just going to reel it fairly slowly trying to keep it down at that depth all the way back to the boat through those fish and a little bitty bait that swims really well that doesn't have a ton of action when they're suspended like that they're gonna hit now some of the areas that you can fish are some of the bodies of water you can fish this thing works great in in rivers uh especially small mouth rivers i'll put on this uh let me grab it real quick the z-man trd craw i'll throw that on and it works wonders for smallmouth i'll also use a a rage little baby rage craw on a ned rig uh it just works really good there where it really shines are in little small ponds and small lakes uh bank fishing and and my favorite way to fish it there is the lift and drop like this also you can cast it out let it sink to the bottom and just slowly start reeling it like you would a suspended fish but reeling it just off the bottom super slow because a lot of those lakes have silt on the bottom and if you let it sit on the bottom too long it works its way into the silt and the bass just aren't going to grab it so you try to keep it above the silt but when i'm in a competition like i was with noah pescatelli several years ago kicking their bass tv we went to his lake that he learned to fish on and i kicked his tail in a little one-on-one competition oh the only thing i had was a pocket of finesse trds and a ned rig tied onto the end of my rod and that's what i'll take every time i go to a pond bank fishing it's hot i'm sweating bullets so i'm gonna try to catch a fish in the next few minutes and if i can't catch one we're gonna go to the house because i don't feel like getting dehydrated today all right so on a hook set you just reel into them and start lifting just like that you want that drag to sing because it means you got that light line set good that's not a bad little bass and then take your time especially with those big ones now i've got eight pound test fluorocarbon on there i typically will run six to eight but you just want to take your time and let them play themselves out look at that son of a gun he's a good little fish [Music] look at him jordan [Music] he ain't ready to come in [Music] all right and of course i don't have the net in the boat i'll reach down and grab him that hook is so light such a light wire hook you literally don't have to set the hook hard you just pull it snug and the tip will grab and then it'll eventually get in there and get him good so there he is let me stand up get some good pretty pictures for you all right we're gonna let him go see ya brother let's go catch his girlfriend all right so i talked a little bit about how this uh rig is is not for brush it's not for brush piles and grass and that kind of stuff you just don't get hung up too much yeah you can try to use the the weed guard the ones with the weed guard and they work pretty good except i just don't get a good hook set with them ever and so i try to stay away from them it's a good one to fish around the edges of brush and grass it'll pull the fish out of the edges and get them to bite but i typically don't fish it in in those kind of situations all right last cast because it's hot i'm tired of if i sweating catch one on this it's gonna be into this video so we'll see let it sink to the bottom all the way to the bottom oh well all right guys well i hope you learned something from this video if you liked it hit the thumbs up do the subscription thing all that other stuff hit the little bell so you guys could get notifications if you haven't done that already but like i always say be sure to introduce somebody to fishing introduce them to my channel let me help you teach them how to fish more importantly get out of the water go ahead and catch some fish and have a great day we'll see

Channel: Flukemaster

Views: 155,859

Keywords: ned rig, how to fish a ned rig, how to fish, bass fishing, finesse fishing, ned rig fishing, bass fishing tips, ned rig tips, ned rig setup, drop shot, fishing tips, how to fish the ned rig, midwest finesse, plastic worm, the ned rig, ned rig bass fishing, how to, largemouth bass, smallmouth bass, how to use a ned rig, bank fishing, catch more fish, beginner bass fishing

Id: OhgmLM2lg7A

Length: 16min 54sec (1014 seconds)

Published: Thu Aug 19 2021