Tackle Tactics » Tips-Techniques » The-Ned-Rig » Give Them A Ned

Give Them A Ned

By Sean Bekkers

Well, I hope your fishing has been epic, I’ve been finding a few lately. From all reports the flathead have been around in numbers, with trophy fish being caught on all manner of presentations. For me, although I’ve been throwing a variety of presentations, there has been one that has been a standout and that’s the Ned Rig System.

Many of you may know of the Ned Rig but for those of you that don’t, this presentation consists of a button or mushroom shaped jighead, instead of your more traditional shape jighead, rigged buoyant plastic such as a ZMan. This becomes a super effective presentation when paused on the bottom and this is because on each pause the natural buoyancy of the plastic takes over and any tail, claw or antennae will float up and wave around in the current. The jighead design anchors the plastic to the bottom, creates a rapid ‘stand up’ presentation and as you can imagine, makes an irresistible snack for an interested fish.

Before I get into the specifics of the presentation and colours that have been working for me, let’s have a quick look at the types of Ned Rig specific jigheads in the TT Fishing range, called NedlockZ. It’s worth mentioning that the Ned Rig System is a finesse presentation so the jighead weights are light and hook sizes are quite small. The NedlockZ comes in two types of hooks, the first being a standard, exposed style of hook the protrudes through the top of the plastic, a heavy-duty Mustad black nickel chemically sharpened hook and the same hook that appears on the popular HeadlockZ HD jighead. The second hook style is on the TT NedlockZ EWG (extra wide gap) jighead, which gives you a weedless option when Ned rigging, built on a heavy duty custom VMC hook. There are four weights available in each style; 1/15oz, 1/10oz, 1/6oz and 1/5oz, built on size 1 hooks, in four colours; Green Pumpkin, Black, Chartreuse and Orange.

Now onto the presentation, there are some specifically designed Ned rig baits available in the ZMAN range, plastics like the TRD Crawz and TRD Bugz which are absolute dynamite presentations when presented on either Nedlockz jig head, as they both have claws and antenna which wave around in the current.  For me though I tend to use the TRD Bugz and it is usually the first Ned Rig presentation I’ll try in a session.  As I hinted to earlier the Ned rig is a finesse presentation, it’s one that I rip out when I want a subtle bait that is going tempt a fish to bite, retrieve wise I find small hops and shakes in between longer than normal pauses work the best, as this you’re really need that presentation to sit in amongst the weed or structure for along as possible to draw any interested fish in, more often than not you’ll get the bite on the pause. Another must have in my opinion is a Procure that is going to help sell the presentation, a flavour like prawn or yabbie nipper for example.

ZMan has a selection of plastics that have been designed with the Ned Rig System in mind, however you are not limited to just these few because ZMan plastics are naturally buoyant, so there is a heap of models out there that will work effectively on a Nedlockz jigheads. For example, the 2.5” GrubZ, 3.75” StreakZ and the 3” Baby GOAT are excellent options, that work well on either the standard NedlockZ or NedlockZ EWG jighead. One thing they all have in common is that when paused the tails of the plastics are going to wave around in the current, basically waving a dinner bell to the fish. Some new additions that will be awesome fished on the Ned Rig are the 2.5” ST GrubZ and 2.5” PrawnZ, which I can’t wait to get my hands on.

Option 1: I guess you could call this the ‘trial and error’ approach.

So, one question I asked myself when I was first introduced to this style of fishing was ‘when would I use a Ned rig over say 2.5” Slim SwimZ rigged on a traditional style jighead’. Looking back, it’s a fair question. Fast forward to now and there is a couple of key things that I’ll look for when opting to use a Ned Rig presentation. Straight up, if my heading out I’ll have one tied on ready to go and most likely it’ll be a TRD BugZ in Hot Snakes colour. Once I’m in an area I’ll systematically cycle through all the presentations that I have rigged, including the Ned Rig, until one gets the bite.

Option 2: Shallow water structure.

I’m usually looking to throw this presentation around structure, such as rocks, weed banks, small drop offs in the sand and basically anywhere I want a subtle presentation that I can hold in and amongst the prime strike zone area. As the presentation is lightly weighted, I’m usually throwing it in shallower water, say up to 3-4 metres, depending on wind and current conditions for the day.

Option 3: Find the bait and match the bait.

The last thing that I look for and probably the most important is the bait that is holding in the area. Most commonly I’m trying to convince the fish that my presentation is a crab or prawn, yabby, or insect, that they really should be eating. So, if I’m fishing an edge or weed bank, I’ll be looking for signs of prawns or crabs, if there are signs of fish hassling prawns for example, then it’s nearly a guarantee that I’ll be sending a Ned rig in there.

As you may have gathered, this is one style of fishing that I really enjoy and of late it has been responsible for good catches of flathead, bream and even a nice snapper. On my last trip I rigged a ZMan Baby GOAT on a NedlockZ EWG jighead and landed my biggest kayak flathead to date, easily reaching around the 70cm mark, on this finesse presentation. If you haven’t given the Ned Rig System a go and you’re into finesse fishing, this is one presentation that you need in your arsenal. Cheers for reading.

Screaming Dragz, Sean