Northwest Reel Life April 2023 Volume 2 Issue 9 - Flipbook - Page 20
The Jika rig is perfect for dragging
tubes as it keeps the bait on
the bottom without the fear of
getting hung up and dragging
tubes is really quite simple. You
essentially drop a plastic grub to a
lake's bottom in areas likely to be
holding bass, and use your trolling
motor to drag the bait across the
bottom while also maintaining
constant contact with structure.
I like to crawl my baits very slowly
with a long pause in colder water
moving the bait only a few inches
at a time.
One day a few years ago I went
fishin in late March and it was
blinding cold outside. Dressed in
my insulted coveralls and armed
with my hot coco coffee, black
licorice and a box of doughnuts, I
hit the river for a little bank fishing.
My standard tube dragging
equipment at the time consisted
20 | NWFISHING.net
of some ¼ to ½ oz. tube jigs,
and some 2” Gitzit tubes to 3.5”
Strike King Coffee tubes. I hiked
down to my favorite early spring
Largemouth hole and cast a tube
to the spot on the spot where
I knew the early spring largies
would be. As soon as the bait
hit the bottom I had a nice fat
3lb bass on. My next cast I only
crawled the bait about a foot and
it was hung up. Since I was bank
fishing you can’t just move to a
spot you can pull the bait loose like
you can in a boat, so I broke that
off, retied and cast again. In my
next 10 casts I got 4 fish and broke
off 6 times. I knew there had to be
a better way when I remembered
an article I had read a few months
prior about a new rig. I couldn’t
remember what it was called,
but I did remember what it
basically looked like. So I looked
through my tackle and found
some long dropshot weights and
a few smaller than average EWG
hooks. I took a small split ring off
a crankbait and attached it to the
EWG hook and put the weight
on it and rigged up my tube I was
using Texas style. Well I landed
10 fish from 2 to 5 lbs in a row
without one break off and I knew I
was on to something.
Since that experience, I have been
fishing that odd rig with a funny
name with great success in places
that a normal tube rig would get
hung up every time. There is also
another version of this rig called a
Tokyo rig that the weight is on a
wire about 2 to 4 inches long.
I haven’t tried this rig yet, but I plan
to this coming year to see if I like it
any better than what I have been
using. I hope you guys will try both
the Jika rig and this other one to
see what you like best.