There we go. All right. Stupid rig. That'll do the trick. Right there. He just slammed that. I love it. Hey folks.
Glenn May here with BassResource.com. Today, I want to talk to you about the stupid rig. Yeah. That's the name of it. It's called the stupid rig. Basically, it's a Texas rigged tube, but there's more to it than that.
So, today, I want to talk to you a little bit about the rig, how it works and why it's so effective, how to rig it, including what line, and rods and reels to use. And then I want to show you how to fish it. A couple of different ways you can use it. There are a couple of tips and tricks.
Now the stupid rig, I have to admit, when it first came out everybody was talking about, "Oh, I can Texas rig tubes now, and I can throw it in bushes, and cover, and flip and pitch it." And I thought, man, it's appropriately named, because that really is stupid. Because I have been throwing Texas rig tubes for decades. This is not revolutionary. It is not new. Okay? Well, part of that's true. In essence it is a Texas rig tube. So, there's nothing new about that.
What's different is you're using a jig to rig it. And a regular jig head that you use on tubes, you stick the jig head in the tube, and the hook sticks out above it and it's exposed. That's the way we used to always throw them and the way we first threw tubes when they first came out.
Now you can rig it just like a Texas rig. Put a bullet sinker in front. Use an EWG hook on there, and you can make a Texas rig. That works too. There's also a couple of other ways to do it, and I'll show you a link. I've got another video that shows you different ways to rig the tube, including the way I've been doing it for decades. And you can rig it that way and make it weedless.
But what's different here is a different kind of jig head. And with that jig head you get a little bit different action than you can with some of the other rigs I just mentioned. So, what is that?
Well, you've got this jig head that I talked about. But you notice a couple of things about it. Here you've got the hook. It's like an EWG hook, so it's designed to come flat against the tube and then the eye placement is at a 60 degree eye. What that does is when it sits inside the tube, guess what? Now the eye sticks up straight up 90 degrees above the tube, and slightly back from the tube head. And the hook is now flat to the bait making it Texas. Okay. So, it's a unique way of rigging a jig head, and you get that same kind of action out of it than you did with other jigs.
But to rig it takes a little bit of extra finesse to it. So, a couple of things you need to think about.
First of all, what I do. Some guys say lick it. I don't do that, because it's a lead head. What I do is I just take a tube of MegaStrike, but there's a lot of other gel type baits out there that you can use to do this with. But I just take a little bit of MegaStrike and I stick it in the tube just to lubricate it a little bit. That's all. There's nothing much. But I just put a little bit in there, and there you go. All right. So, I stuck a little bit in there. You can use Smelly Jelly, whatever. There's a bunch out there.
Now, here's the thing. You want it to sit like this first at the end of the day. So, make note. See where the hook comes out of the body? See how far forward that is, or far, you know, right where it comes out of the body? That's where you want to make note, because that's where you're going to put the hook point.
"Now wait a minute? What? That's where I'm going to put the hook point?" Yeah. Follow me. Follow the bouncing ball.
So, what we're going to do here is we're going to rig it hook first into the tube all the way down. And you want that hook point to come out right about where you want the hook to come out of the bait of the body. Slide it in. See this? And now with that MegaStrike in there it just slides real easy. You just pull it right on down.
Here we are. It's right in the body. And now you just, kind of, flip it around. It's hard to see. I'm trying to do this where you guys can see what I'm doing, but you pivot it. See, it's straight up and down now? You pivot it and you bring it right around and look at that. Now it's in the body.
So, what you want to do is just punch this eye right through the bait like that. See it sticking out? And now you just...90 degrees here, guys. You want the bait to be straight up and down, the hook to go through it, just like that. Then bring it down. And now you've got the bait. The hook is flat against the bait. And you just bring it up and you just put the point of it right into the body. And now it's completely weedless.
There we go. Right there. Boom. Yeah. Not a very big guy, but you know. They don't get big unless they're small first. But it's sure a lot of fun. Stupid rig.
Pretty slick, huh? Here's the key. With the eye sticking straight up like this, the bait now, when you throw it in the water, it's gonna glide, instead of just falling, it's gonna glide through the water like this, which makes it look like more realistic, more like a bait fish as it's going through the water column. That works great.
It's almost like the flying lure, guys. You can throw it up under docks and under vegetation. Let it glide up underneath it. Remember the flying lure back then? Sorry. Some of you guys aren't going to like that analogy, but, you know, it does. It's got that gliding action. And you can get it to actually fly away from you or swim away from you on the cast out and get up underneath cover where you couldn't cast to.
But another thing about this, I didn't rig it here this way, but if you rig it so the eye is further back behind the front of the lure, when you do that, the further back you go, the more the lure will spiral downwards in a death spiral when it falls. You can only get that spiral action with a tube. That's originally how we used to throw it with an open tube jig or the open hook tube jig, is originally we would throw it and it would, with that eyelet, sitting offset further back from the nose of the bait sticking back here a little bit, it made it just spiral as it fell. And, man, bass just can't resist that. That action is really appealing to them and triggers their predatory instinct and they just slurp it right up.
So, now, with the weedless action here, you can get that same action around cover. You can throw it around weeds, you know, the weed edges or in the weeds, flooded bushes, that sort of thing, and get that same kind of action without fear of getting hung up like you would if you had an open hook jig head. Right? So that is the real appeal to the stupid rig.
Here we go. You wanted that, didn't you? Boy, you took it good. You hit that thing hard. Oh, this is so much fun. You guys have got to try this rig out, man. You're going to love it. There you go, buddy. Thank you.
Now a couple of things about this thing. First of all, let's talk about rigging it. And then I've got, well, I have my opinions on it. I'll let you know what those are here in a second. But I want to walk you through the rest of rigging this thing, which is the line and the reel to use and the rod.
When you're throwing around heavy cover, like I am today, I'm using a braided line. I'm throwing a 50 pound Seaguar Smackdown Braided Line, because I'm throwing around woody and vegetation cover. And I'm throwing it with a heavy power, fast action rod 7 foot 2 inch to 7 foot 6 inch rod. Just pitching it into cover. Anything I can find that's flooded bushes, and shrubs, and thicker vegetation, I'm throwing it in and around that, and these fish are just annihilating it. They're taking it before it even hits the bottom. So, it's that action that they're looking for. I have it rigged a little bit further back. I'm giving it that little of a swaying side to side, almost swirling action as it falls.
Now, if I was throwing it a little more open cover in and around, say, weed edges or throwing it under docks or just sparse vegetation, then you can lighten up and use a 15 pound fluorocarbon line such as Seaguar Invizx and throw that on a medium heavy fast action rod, say, a 7 foot 1 inch to 7 foot 3 inch or 7 foot 4 inch rod, that would be ideal with the reel. On both of these it would be about the same, because you're not looking for speed with this. So, you don't need a fast gear ratio. So, anywhere in that, say, 6.1 to 1 gear ratio all the way up to maybe even a 7.4 to 1 gear ratio. Nothing that's super fast, but you know, that's just fine. As long as you've got a good drag on it, you won't have any problems. That's usually what I rig it up with. That's the best way to use it.
Here we go. There we go. All right. He just could not resist that tube. Nice. It's clear water, man. You can see them come up and hit it. He's been feeding. Got a little gut on him just like me. Thank you, buddy. I appreciate the fun. Go play.
Now to fish it. To fish it, all's you're doing is you're casting out and you're letting the bait do the work for you. Let it spiral. Let it dart. Let it glide and swim. If you try to throw that and then reel it in right away or try to work it, you're going to kill the action. It's all about letting it do the work for you. So, give it a little bit of slack line and let it do it's thing.
For that reason, you want to watch the line. Be very careful and watch that line because what you'll see is you'll see a pop, a jump, or start to peel off away from you all of a sudden and you didn't do that. So, it's got to be a fish. So, that's how you're going to detect a strike is by paying close attention to what the line is doing where it enters the water. Other than that, it's very simple.
Once it hits the bottom, what you can do is when you pull on it, since the eye is up here, when it hits something, it kind of butts up and sticks up in the air. It'll go on the bottom and it sticks up. And these tentacles come up and flutter about and it almost looks like a crawdad in defensive position. And you can, kind of, wiggle it. Just take your rod tip and just, kind of, slowly pop it up and down just a little bit and you can make this thing wobble up and down like this. You can make it walk on the bottom. Pick it up. It walks. Let it flutter back down. Then it walks a little bit more on the bottom. Flutter back down. Walks a little bit more.
So, this is really cool. You can get this, kind of, a walking action. Almost like a defensive crawdad walking on the bottom, and you can get bites that way, too. So, there's on the fall, and then there's working it on the bottom. You've got a couple of different ways that you can work this bait in order to catch more fish.
That said, I have an opinion on this, is there's only...at least as making this video, there's not a whole lot of stupid jigs out there. There's a couple of manufacturers that make them. And my beef with them is the hooks on them are too big, and the weights on them are too big. This is almost a 3 3/4 inch tube and it's almost too small for this rig. You can see actually that the back of the hook is where the tentacles are. Okay? Really this is designed for a 4 inch or a larger tube. And I fish...mostly mine are 3 1/4 and 3 1/2 inch tubes. Sometimes 3 inch tubes. And because of that, most of these hooks won't work with that size.
Also, if you notice the size of the jig head, how big it is, you've got to fit it in this tube here, well, the smaller tubes, they have a smaller diameter, you just can't fit the jig head in here, period. It's not gonna fit. Those are just too small. So, this is really designed for larger tubes. More like the flippin' style tubes that are the thicker wall. Nothing wrong with that. I've been flipping tubes for decades now. The tubes with the thicker walls hold up better to that kind of abuse, but if I wanted to throw a smaller tube, there really aren't any rigs out there, at least as we're making of this video, that I could find any kind of jigs that would work with smaller sized tubes.
So, when they start making them, maybe, with tungstens, tungsten heads...maybe they do and I just couldn't find it, but I would say a tungsten head with a smaller size hook, so it can fit those smaller tubes, then I'll be more apt to throw this. But I feel that this is kind of a limiting type of outfit. You can only use it for certain size lures under certain conditions.
So, it's not something that I personally will throw that much because I know how to Texas rig those baits, the smaller ones. Like I said, I have a video that shows you how to do it. And, so, I feel very comfortable doing that. However, if you want something that's really easy to rig, that's actually easier to do than what I show on my videos, and you use larger size tubes, nothing wrong with it then. Knock yourself out. Have a lot of fun. You're going to catch a lot of fish.
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