June 08, 2018
By Ned Kehde
On May 27, a reader of one of our Midwest Finesse gear guides said that he "would love" to read about our thoughts regarding Lifted Jigs' 1/16-ounce Ned EWG Jig Head.
We immediately ventured to Lifted Jigs' website and this link: https://www.liftedjigs.com/terminal.
Here is their description of it: "Providing 100% weedless performance for Ned rigging, [it] is perfect for fishing around heavy cover and brush without the bulkiness of a weedguard. Built around a 1/0 EWG Gamakatsu hook, [it] can be rigged Texas style with the hook point tex-posed, allowing your bait to come through all sort of cover without snagging. [it] is also molded with a classic mushroom style head that keeps your bait positioned upward when sitting on the bottom, tempting the most finicky bass into striking. Fish your Ned rig in places that were previously inaccessible €¦."
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It is available in two colors; black and green pumpkin. And they also have an unpainted one.
A package of three costs $4.49.
They also make a 1/8-ounce and a 3/16-ounce Ned EWG Jig Head.
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As for our thoughts, they are nice looking jigs. And it looks as if they are jigs that power anglers will use when they employ a tactic that we call power-finesse fishing, which is not a part of our Midwest finesse repertoire. Across the many years that we have been affixing a variety of small soft-plastic baits, which started with a Nick and Cosma Creme's soft-plastic worm and a Bass Buster Lure Company's Beetle, to a jig in pursuit of largemouth bass, smallmouth bass, and spotted bass, we have never had a need to fish places that are inaccessible. Our aim is to catch 25 black bass an hour, and on average we catch about 10 an hour, and to accomplish that feat and not harm the black bass that we hook, we have found that it is best to use No. 6, No 4, and No. 2 hooks. And when we are probing lairs that are accessible but somewhat laden with snags, we have found that a small hook and a lightweight jig, such as a 1/32-ounce one or a 1/20-ounce one, are ideal; it is a tactic that we learned to use decades ago when we were using marabou jigs with light-wire hooks.
In other words, it is not a jig that the dyed-in-the-wool Midwest finesse angler will use. Nevertheless, we hope that it will help power-finesse anglers to use a short soft-plastic bait, such as 2 1/2- to four-inch stick-style bait or a four-inch shad-shaped worm, to catch more black bass around previously inaccessible lairs. We suspect, however, that a four-inch soft-plastic bait will be more effective than a 2 1/2- or 2 3/4-inch one when it is affixed Texas-style on a Ned EWG Jig Head .
Endnotes
(1) For more information about small jigs and hooks, please see the Midwest Finesse column at this link: http://www.in-fisherman.com/midwest-finesse/small-jigs-and-hooks-lie-at-the-heart-of-our-finesse-tactics/ .
(2) For more inforation about retrieve small Midwest finesse jigs, please see the Midwest Finesse column at this link: http://www.in-fisherman.com/midwest-finesse/six-midwest-finesse-retrieves/ .
