I have tried to fish the wacky rig. Honestly.
But it’s like watching paint dry. In the winter. At night.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. I know the rig catches a lot of fish. I understand that.
It’s just not in my DNA to fish an unweighted rig and watch curly cues of fishing line on the water while a Senko takes its own sweet time fluttering through the water column.
Fortunately, David Bond felt the same way during a trip to Louisiana’s Toledo Bend back in 2011.
“We were catching bedded bass in the back of one of the creeks on wacky rigs,” Bond said. “We had a hard time keeping the rig on the bottom because of the wind, even with lead nails in the bait.”
He and his fishing buddy tried adding weighted hooks to overcome the wind, but the bass hated that idea.
“They weren’t hitting the wacky rigs with a jighead,” Bond said. “They’d only hit it with a small weightless hook.”
The experience made the angler grind his teeth, since he knew they were in the right place.
And that was the genesis for a better wacky rig that Bond eventually dubbed the WackOjig.
“Through my frustration, I looked at my buddy and said, ‘When I get home, I’m going to make a mold at the shop and create a jig that has a ring attached to it,’” Bond said.
What he envisioned was a setup that could hold the bait with all the weight centered.
“And it would be heavy enough to get deep,” Bond said.
When he got home, he constructed a hand-made plastic mold that cracked after he poured his second jig.
But he had a couple of prototypes for testing.
The bass ate them up.
“My cousin and I caught over 40 bass that evening,” Bond said. “But the big catch was that we caught those bass with only three Senkos.”
Being able to catch fish after fish without changing baits was something that hadn’t been considered.
“If you fish with Senkos, you know that after three or four fish the bait is toast,” Bond said.
More testing and tweaking took place until Bond arrived at a model he liked. The real trick was getting the lead ring to come out correctly.
“Seems that ring was almost impossible to get to pour correctly,” Bond said.
The finished WackOjigs looked like flat jigheads with molded rings through which soft-plastic baits can be threaded.
“After two months of trial and error, and changing the design six times, we perfected it,” Bond said.
This thing is made for anglers like me, who would like to fish wacky worms without going stark-raving mad. It’s got enough weight to actually work through the water column before a man can grow a beard, while driving bass to bite just like traditional wacky rigs.
The WackOjig comes in three-packs, and feature 4/0 Mustad hooks with wire weed guards. The heads are powder coated to provide durable paint finishes.
Just slip in you favorite soft-plastic stick bait, cast it out and hold on.
“You can swim the WackOjig through shallow or deep water, fish it on the bottom or you can flip it in heavy cover just like jig-n-pigs,” Bond said.
They come in 3/16-, 1/4- and 5/16-ounce weights, and eight jighead colors.
They retail for $6.99 per three-pack.
Go to www.wackojig.com for more information.
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