TECHNIQUES
TAKEOFF
THRIFT’S TAKE
ON FISHING
THE NED RIG
flW’s Resident hiGh-speed
eXpeRt is quite the
accoMplished finesse
anGleR, too
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By Curtis Niedermier
ryan thrift = power fishing, right? that’s what most
bass scribes would lead you to believe. however, the
truth of the matter is that the reigning flW tour
angler of the Year will throw just about anything – including
ultra-finesse tackle – that he thinks will catch a bass and put
another paycheck in his pocket. during thrift’s 2017 aoY run,
his list of approved options included the ned rig, which is one
of the simplest, most subtle bass rigs out there.
for thrift, the ned rig isn’t necessarily a go-to bait, but it’s part
of his system, and he has his own take on the best ways to fish it.
the basic ned rig
the ned rig is nothing more than a 3- to 4-inch soft stick
bait (many folks use a sawed-off Yamamoto senko) on a light
mushroom-head jig. thrift prefers a 1/16- to 1/10-ounce
head with a no. 1 or 1/0 light-wire hook and has used all dif-
ferent makes. his go-to soft plastic is a 4-inch damiki stinger
with a 1/2- to 3/4-inch length cut off the fat end.
“i think the whole key to it is the fall rate. it’s falling so slow
that a lot of your bites come on the fall,” he says. “if i’m fishing
on the bank i kind of let it pendulum back. if i’m fishing a target
i’ll leave the bail open on my reel and kind of feed it line and let
it fall vertically. the cool thing about how that bait falls on that
light head is that it doesn’t just fall straight down. it kind of
planes off to the side and moves around, versus just falling
straight to the bottom like a shaky head or drop-shot would.”
the cast-and-fall approach rules out the ned rig as a tool
for fishing flats, deep structure or long drop-offs, where a
dragging presentation with a heavier rig would be better for
covering water. and it’s not his choice for fishing in the
extreme shallows, where thrift prefers a weightless wacky
worm if he wants to fish finesse.
“it’s kind of a fast finesse presentation because i’ll fire it
out there, and i’ll let it go to the bottom, and i might hop it
once and then wind it in and then fire another cast,” thrift
adds. “You have to watch your line. that’s one key with it. if
you fire it out there and you know it’s in 12 feet of water and
it falls 7 or 8 feet and your line stops, you know one’s got it.”
tackle
Where it fits
according to thrift, when extreme water clarity combines
with heavy fishing pressure or weather conditions that shut
down bass, even a drop-shot rig with a 3/8-ounce weight and
a 6-inch worm can be too intrusive for some fish. in that sit-
uation, the pint-sized ned rig might be the most effective tool
to catch five.
“When you go to the ned rig you’re cutting that whole
apparatus in half,” he says.
While anglers have adopted a number of methods for
fishing a ned rig, from dragging and hopping to dead-sticking
it on bottom, thrift uses it primarily as a slow-sinking target
bait around docks, rock piles and points in a depth range
from about 4 to 18 feet of water.
january 2018 I fLWfIshInG.com
spinning tackle is best for the ned rig, and thrift likes the
combination of 10-pound-test p-line XtcB-8 braid with an 8-
pound-test p-line tactical fluorocarbon leader.
“i throw a 12- or 15-foot leader,” thrift adds. “i do that
because a lot of times i fish it with the hook exposed. the
leader allows me to be able to break that bait off [when
snagged] and not have to waste time retying a new leader.”
fighting fish
any rig is only as good as its landing percentage, and
thrift says that despite the teensy hook on the ned rig, he’s
still able to control the fish, and his hookup-to-landing ratio is
actually pretty good.
“i fight them just like i would on any other bait,” he says. “if
you think about it, you actually hook them better on it
because it’s such a small bait that when they bite it they pret-
ty much suck it all the way in. about 80 percent of the ones
you hook are hooked good.”
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