(Editor's note: The following is the latest installment in a series of fishing tips presented by The Bass University. Check back each Friday for a new tip.)
While many of Mike Iaconelli’s greatest angling successes have come with power techniques, he’s set himself apart from the pack with his unrelenting passion for finesse gear. He works diligently every year to better understand and develop new light-line presentations that’ll fool pressured bass, and when it comes to figuring out which ones work best, he’s convinced that “movement is everything.”
That’s why he developed the “chicken rig,” so named because of the way it acts on the lake bottom.
“This is what I call a pecking bait,” he explained. It falls naturally and erratically, and you’ll get some bites during its descent, but it really shines when the fat end of your soft plastic touches down and “pecks” the bottom. “So many things the bass eat peck on the bottom, from little bluegill to minnows to dace to catfish, to even crawfish.”
Unlike a wacky rig or Neko rig, however, it’s totally weedless. That starts with a specialized “hybrid hook” like the VMC Finesse Neko Hook which takes various attributes from both straight-shank and offset hooks. It also has two keepers made of 50-pound test fluorocarbon that allow the bait to stay pegged and ensure that the soft plastic is not impeding your hookset. He’ll use a Size 1 for 4- or 5-inch baits, a size 1/0 for 5 1/2-inch baits and a #2 or #2/0 when he goes smaller or larger than those extremes, respectively. Onto them he rigs lures like soft stickbaits and straight-tailed worms. “You want to have a lure that has a straight tail and a fatter blunt end to it,” he said.
Rather than rigging his soft plastics at the nose, he turns the fat end facing downward and then inserts the hook three-quarters of the way down the soft plastic, taking care to keep the bait ramrod straight. The line comes straight out of the lure’s midpoint, which is the key to its action and to its exceptionally high hookup percentage. The last piece of the puzzle is a nail weight or Half Moon weight inserted into the fat end of the worm, anywhere from 1/32-ounce to 1/4-ounce, but just heavy enough to maintain bottom contact. Again, it’s critical that the weight be perfectly straight, and that it sticks out of the lure slightly. That way on harder bottoms the pecking action will kick up dust and silt and make a little bit of noise.
His favorite rod is a 7’ to 7’6, medium-light to medium action, with somewhere between 30 and 40 percent tip. That helps with casting distance, action and hookset. “We want those fish to get it a little bit, and we want to get into ‘em, but it’s not a big hook. It’s a little light-wire style hook.” Rather than powering it home, he effects what is essentially a dropshot-style “pull” hooksetting motion.
If you want to get more insight into Ike’s chicken rig madness, including his favorite soft plastics and his different line choices for differing scenarios, check out his full video filmed on the water, available only by subscribing to The Bass University TV.
