There are days when bass won't touch a Texas rig, a crankbait, or anything that moves with confidence. Post-cold-front. Clear, flat-calm water with full sun. Heavily pressured spots on a weekend afternoon. Those are the days you switch to finesse, and finesse in bass fishing means slowing everything down and letting a small, subtly moving bait do the work for you.
The wacky rig and the ned rig are the two most effective finesse presentations for bass in Quebec waters. They're simple to rig, cheap to fish, and consistently produce when power fishing has stopped working.
The Wacky Rig
A wacky rig is a stick bait (most commonly a 5-inch Yamamoto Senko or equivalent) hooked through the middle of the bait rather than through the head. That's the entire rig. No weight, no extra hardware. The hook goes through the centre, and both ends of the bait hang free and wiggle on the fall.
The action on the fall is the whole point. As the bait sinks horizontally, both ends quiver and pulse with a motion that bass find very difficult to ignore. Let it sink on a slack line without moving your rod. Most strikes come on the fall, you'll feel a light tick or your line will stop sinking and move sideways. Set the hook.
Wacky Rig Setup
Use a size 1 or 1/0 weedless hook (Gamakatsu G-Finesse Weedless is the standard) for fishing around docks, pads, or light cover. In open water with no snag risk, a standard wide-gap hook works fine and gives better hookup ratios. Fluorocarbon leader of 8 to 10 lb lets the bait sink naturally and is nearly invisible in clear water.
An O-ring placed around the middle of the stick bait extends its life significantly. Hook through the O-ring instead of directly through the bait, and each bait lasts 8 to 10 fish rather than 1 to 2. An O-ring tool and a pack of rings cost about $8. Worth it when you're burning through $1.50 Senkos.
For deeper water (10 feet or more), a nail weight pressed into the nose or tail of the bait gets it down faster while preserving the wacky action. Start light (1/32 oz) and go heavier only if fish aren't seeing the bait before it rises back to you.
The Ned Rig
The ned rig is a small mushroom-head jig (1/16 to 3/16 oz) paired with a 2.5 to 3.5-inch stick bait or chunk, rigged weedless through the nose. The mushroom head keeps the bait standing upright on the bottom, tail in the air. It looks like something alive picking at the bottom. Bass eat it.
The ned is a bottom-contact bait. Cast it out, let it hit bottom, and barely move it. Short hops of 2 to 3 inches, long pauses, occasional drags. The bait's standing posture does most of the work. You're not trying to imitate a fleeing baitfish, you're imitating something feeding slowly on the bottom that a bass can eat without much effort.
This is why the ned rig catches fish when nothing else will. A bass that won't chase a swimbait or commit to a crankbait will often eat a ned rig just because it's sitting there looking easy.
Ned Rig Setup
Z-Man makes the ElaZtech plastic specifically for ned rigs. It's buoyant (which creates the standing posture) and extremely durable. A pack of 8 baits in the right profile (FinesseTRD or TRD HogZ) runs about $6 and they don't tear easily. Pair with a TRD CrawZ or equivalent mushroom head jig in 1/16 to 1/8 oz for most Quebec bass applications.
Spinning tackle is the right tool for both the wacky and ned rig. A 7-foot medium-light spinning rod with a 2500-series reel spooled with 8 lb braid to a 6 to 8 lb fluorocarbon leader handles both presentations. Use too heavy a setup and the baits don't fall or sit naturally.
When to Use Each
Wacky rig in the water column: around docks, over weed edges, alongside rocky banks where bass are positioned vertically. The horizontal fall covers that mid-water zone better than the ned.
Ned rig on the bottom: rock transitions, gravel points, sand flats, the base of dock posts. Anywhere a bass is holding tight to bottom structure and you need a slow, non-threatening presentation to trigger a bite.
Both become most valuable after cold fronts, in clear water conditions, on heavily fished public water, and whenever conventional power fishing has failed for an hour or more. Switching to finesse isn't giving up, it's reading what the fish are telling you.
These Catch Smallmouth Too
On the Richelieu or Lac Saint-Louis, a ned rig dragged slowly over rocky structure is one of the best smallmouth presentations available. Smallmouth are naturally bottom-oriented fish on rock, and the ned's standing posture over gravel looks exactly like something they eat every day. A wacky-rigged Senko on a weedless hook around Richelieu dock pilings accounts for a lot of fish that wouldn't commit to a tube jig.
For more on smallmouth presentation options, see our Smallmouth Bass Profile and the Drop Shot guide.
20+ years fishing Quebec's freshwater systems. Kayak angler, catch-and-release advocate, and founder of Sub Urban Anglers.
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