(Editor's note: The following is the seventh in a series of fishing tips presented by The Bass University. Check back each Friday for a new tip.)
Mike Iaconelli loves to flip, frog and crank, but when conditions negate the benefits of power-fishing, he reverts to the spinning tackle that defines his northeastern roots and gets to work. He explained that fishing is bad more often than it’s good, and whether it’s fishing pressure, post-frontal conditions, suspended fish or all of the above, subtlety usually rules the day.
He’s certainly proficient with a shaky-head and a dropshot, but increasingly Ike finds himself reaching for a trio of “old is new” presentations that he said excel when local bass don’t want to chew anything else.
The first is the “Ned Rig,” which he jokingly suggested should be renamed the “Ike Rig.” It’s a latter day version of the jighead worm, but uses a mushroom-shaped jighead – he prefers the VMC Half Moon head – and a soft stickbait like a Senko or Yum Dinger. By biting off up to an inch of the head of the soft plastic, the lure seats perfectly in the flat side of the jighead. His personal favorite lure for this technique is the Berkley Havoc Flat Dawg. Unlike the others, which tend to be round, the Flat Dawg has a flat side, which “lets the bait glide real natural.” He likes natural colors including watermelon, green pumpkin, smoke and straight black.
He simply drags it slowly and the only time he stops its forward motion is when he hits a piece of cover. “A lot of the bites happen when you pop it out of a snag,” he said.
Another lure he uses to bail himself out on tough days is a finesse swimbait. Like the jighead worm, this one is “older than bell-bottom jeans,” he said. It’s a modern Sassy Shad or tab-tail grub. It reminds him of a shad that has gotten away from its brothers and is exposed and about to get chewed. The best part about it is that it requires no special retrieves – he just counts it down and retrieves it slowly and steadily. “Every once in a while I throw in a pause just to change it up,” he added.
When the fishing is so terrible they won’t eat the finesse swimbait, he likes a “no motion” minnow – options includes a Berkley Twitchtail Minnow, a Fin-S-Fish or a Tiny Fluke. The key is a wacky jighead, but instead of wacky-rigging it or Texas-rigging it, he nose-hooks the lure. He admitted that it’s “silly-looking” but in the toughest times it’s one of his favorite tools.
He loves the Japanese-developed Neko Rig, which he said is a true “match the hatch” presentation. While several of the above techniques are perfect for horizontal presentations, this one excels vertically, around bridge pilings, sea walls and other similar cover. He often pairs it with a finesse worm, but generally prefers a soft stickbait. No matter which plastic he employs, he puts a nail weight in the tail.
You can use a regular dropshot or splitshot hook, he said, but his hookup ratio soared when he started rigging it with a 1/0 or 2/0 straight-shank, short-shank version. “It’s almost like a bait-style hook,” he said. While there are several different ways to impale the lure, he doesn’t wacky-rig it, nose-hook it or Texas-rig it. He wants the hook “in line with the bait,” and believes that since changing nearly exclusively to that rigging, he’s increased his catch ratio substantially.
“Every time it falls, it falls a little bit different,” he said of the Neko Rig’s appeal. When it hits the bottom, he’ll “small-twitch it up to the target, let it fall.” Once it’s past the target, he reels it in and pitches it out again.
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