5 Tips For Fishing A Wacky Rig Senko

There we go. These little guys are a lot of fun. I'm fishing in the middle summer on a big public reservoir, and I'm catching all the little ones, but I'm telling you what man they a lot of fun. You can have a 100 fish day on this lake easily doing this.  What I'm doing? Fishing a wacky rig Senko. Look at that man he's got that right in his face.

So today I'm gonna show you how I rig this up, what equipment I'm using, and then I'm gonna to take you on the water and show you how to, all the different techniques to use fishing wacky rig Senko.

Hey folks, Glenn May here with BassResource.com and, today, I want to talk to you about wacky rigging a Senko and how to fish it. I want to take you through the outfits I use, the rigs, the gear, how you use that, and then how to fish it. I'm not going to show you how to rig it. I've got a video on that that's linked underneath this video here that you can look at later. This is essentially what we're looking at, just a wacky rig.

Now, I want to take you through what I'm using here. I know there's a lot of specialty equipment that you can get, or a lot of tackle you can get. There's O rings, there's weighted O rings, there's specialty hooks, there's octopus hooks, there's weighted jigs. There's all these things you can get specifically for wacky rigging and there's nothing wrong with any of them. If this is what you use and you're accustomed to using it, then keep using it. I'm not saying the way I do it is the only way to do it or the right way to do it. I'm just going to take you through how I do it.

For me, I just use a football head jig, just a real simple football head jig. And the reason why is I'm all for simplicity. I try not to buy specialty gear that only has one purpose or a one trick pony, because my tackle would just explode with tons of stuff and it's hard to keep it all organized. So, the more that I can multipurpose things, the better. So, here it's just a football head jig that I normally use for fishing grubs, another type of light wire, and a finesse gear, finesse baits. That's all I do, right here. It's real simple. It's kind of ugly, but it serves the trick.

Now, this is an open hook jig. I can speak English, and the reason why is I'm fishing open water. I'm fishing rocks and those type of things that don't have a lot of vegetation, things it can get hung up on, but you can certainly get these that are weedless. They've got a wire in front of it to help prevent it from getting hooked up into anything like that, so you don't get stuck in anything. But, for now, I'm using an open hook jig for these purposes. There's all kinds you can use.

And I've got this paired up with 15 pound co-polymer line. And the reason I'm doing that, this is a light wire hook. This a light wire Gamakatsu hook. If you power this up with braided line and you set the hook on that, you stand a good chance of straightening out that hook or as you're fighting the fish back, it'll straighten out and you may lose the fish that way. So, I'm just using 15 pound co-polymer line. It's got a little bit of stretch to it, a little bit of give. I don't use fluorocarbon on this particular set up.

The reason I'm using this weight, by the way, I want to go back to that for a second. I know some people fish it weightless. To me, if I'm going to fish a Senko weightless, then I'll just Texas rig and fish it that way. When I'm doing wacky rigs, see how it sits like that? This is the action that you want. As it goes through the water, it kind of does that. Well, if you have a weight on it, that accentuates that. If you don't have a weight, it just kind of tends to fall like this. You don't get that action out of it. The more weight you have on it, the more action you get and that's what I want to get when I'm fishing wacky rig. So, that's why it's weighted. Here this is just an eighth ounce weight. You can go up to a quarter ounce, three quarter ounce, depending how deep you're going, depending on if you're fishing windy conditions, you can heavy up, but starting off with an eighth ounce is perfect.

And I'm fishing in our bait casting outfit. This is a medium action with a fast tip rod. Might go medium heavy sometimes, but that, again, you're over powering this thin hook. So, I really don't want to use a medium heavy on this. If I do, I'll have a fast tip on that'll give a little bit of give on it or maybe even an extra fast tip, but a medium action, fast action rod, a medium action rod with a fast tip, that's perfect for this set up. Works great.

Now, if you're fishing in current, that's when we might heavy up a little bit. We might go with a heavier jig. We might go with a half-ounce, maybe even an ounce, depending on how swift the current is because you need that bait to fall through the water column. If you're using a real light weight, you throw it up stream and by the time it gets all the way down, you've got a taut line that's only falling about a foot and a half. So, a little bit of a heavier jig is what you'll be using in that and maybe even heavy up on your line and on your rod and reel.

But, again, it's so versatile. There's so many ways to fish it. If you want to fish it on a spinning outfit, eight pound test, say, for example, nothing wrong with that. You can do that. Again, it just depends on the cover. If you're fishing heavy cover, then you want to heavy up. I'm using bait casting outfits, so why I use it on this. All right, so, that's the gear and that's how you use it. Now, let's go out and fish it.

Okay, so the most straightforward way to fish a wacky rig is just to cast it out there and let it fall. That rig itself is just going to be doing this all the way down. Okay? It's just doing that motion, like I told you before. So, let it do the work for you. So, just cast it out and let it fall and just watch the line. Watch the line as it falls, 'cuz that's when the strike is going to happen. So, you want to watch to see if it pops, twitches, the line jumps, something like that. If you see that, then you just reel down, set the hook.

Now, once it hits the bottom, all you're going to do is lift up on it and let it fall straight down again. Just reel the slack and let it fall, hit the bottom and lift back up and let it fall. And watch that line. Reel up that slack as it's falling and watch that line very carefully because, again, that's when the strike is going to occur.

Now, another way to fish this bait is, I've got some weeds out here. This is a great way to do it. Throw it out there and reel it across the weeds. So, just throw it out there, let it sink a little bit. Now, I'm just going to keep the rod tip down and I'm just going to reel it steady right across the weeds. And hopefully, you call a fish out of the weeds doing it that way. And it's just doing this as you're reeling it. So, it's got a lot of action to it. Great way to catch fish, especially if you've been catching them on a crank bait for a while and that bite dies off a bit. That's when you want to throw this. You can go back to those same areas and catch fish where you were catching them with crank baits before.

And then lastly, one other technique I want to show you. You throw it out there and you let it fall, and it's just dragging it, letting it sit on the bottom, and now I'm just moving the rod tip and I'm dragging it on the bottom with the rod. Reel up the slack. I'm not moving it with the reel, I'm just reeling up the slack. Then I move it with the rod tip and let it sit on the bottom. You're going to be able to feel every little rock, weed, crevice, twig, branch, all that stuff, just crawl it across the bottom.

And that's all there is to it. Here, you're just imitating a bait fish or something on the bottom, feeding on the bottom. The fish will pick it up off of that. Some days, you're going to have to experiment with this. You'll have to play and figure out which way they want to bite. Sometimes, the fish want it when you throw it out and let it fall. Other times, you need to drag it or swim it back. You've just got to experiment with it and, eventually, you'll figure out what it is they want to do.

When you set the hook, 'cuz it is an exposed hook, you don't have to reef it really hard. Just give it a moderate hook set. That's all you need to do, just enough to get that hook past the barb and you'll have a fish.

Hope that helps. For more tips and tricks like this, visit BassResource.com.