Bass Fishing Jan 2018 | Page 19

TECHNIQUES TAKEOFF THRIFT’S TAKE ON FISHING THE NED RIG flW’s Resident hiGh-speed eXpeRt is quite the accoMplished finesse anGleR, too b 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.” 17