Check out this weedless Ned Rig tip from this Bass Resource video at 4:00 minutes in : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5DwFngT9SYg

*I definitely will be rigging this way in the rocky reservoirs I fish ! 

Very nice! And great timing as well. Thanks for the heads up. 

There went 16 minutes of my day...YMMV ?

I only watched about 5 minutes of it. Once I saw what he did I figure a shaky head will be just as good or better.

It is a neat trick to know . It doesnt even have to be used on a Ned rig . It could be on a grub , tube or all sorts of soft plastics and jig heads .

Dates back to at least the mid-late 60s. The late Charlie Brewer wrote and pictured that rigging "trick" in various forms and variations frequently in his Slider articles in the 70s.

OP here : I still will rig the standard Ned way I use (#4 size hook bent out 1 degree on a 1/24th ~ 1/16th oz. mushroom jig head  , 1/2 a Zinker ) which does not get hung up too much at all ... If I had to use a store bought Ned jig head with a larger hook and a heavier weight than above such an approach could work at being weedless as well as keeping the soft plastic straight . As for how to fish the Ned - there are perhaps better references on "how to" from the Mid West members here as well as Ned himself .

Before the "Texas Rig" caught on, anglers got creative with rigging these new plastics out of necessity when fishing around weeds, brush, trees, etc. As such, most rigging methods used today were actually thought of and utilized at some point with the tools available at the time. Here are a few examples in reference to the above.

 

 

The top rigging is essentially a shakey head...1966 from Grits Gresham's bass book.

 

 

The line tie through the head of the bait from Creme's 1967 catalog of tips.

 

 

Charlie Brewer showing variations of this same rigging in his book (1978).