All right everyone, this is Brian Schmitt with bassresource com. It's time to talk about summertime neko rig fishing Neko rig fishing in the summertime. How do you apply that? How do you use that, what to look for, where to go on your body of water. You know it's an excellent tool. You you got to understand when you're using this style bait, this style presentation. You're presenting something that's hard for fish to resist. That's why it's a go to from many touring pros for a long, long time. It's just something that generates bites.
A lot of times when we're in search mode, you know, you see these results on the on these tours and you see aw man they must be jumping in a boat. There's so many struggles leading up to that. So a lot of times we're just looking to get some bites to get some key, you know, some keys from the fish and the Neko rig does that for us a lot. And it's not just a bite getter guys that catches big ones and a lot of them.
So summertime, all right, what we're looking for, we're looking for almost the flip side of the springtime, so the springtime. We're starting to pull up out of the deep water. We're going to stage, we're going to move shallow. Summertime, we're doing the opposite guys. So a lot of times, barring a water level rise, you know, if you're on a body of water, a lake or etcetera, you get a lot of rain, it rises, the fish rise with it. But if you're staying or weather conditions you're getting in this summer, the fish are starting to leave the bank. The shad spawn's done. The fish want to get out, get offshore, get some cooler water, better oxygen and a lot of times they like to get on isolated pieces of cover, you know, and it and it can be pretty easy to pinpoint these fish and a Neko rig is an excellent tool to do this.
Sometimes early, early summer. They're just recovering from the spawn or a little lazy. Other other scenarios why the Neko rig so good in the summer is sometimes these ledge fish. Huge schools of ledge fish, they've been fished for so long, they get so educated. They're not eating the crankbait anymore. They'll eat the Neko rig. This is a lot of scenarios. Why? Why it can be a good thing.
So a lot of things that I'm looking for, guys, is isolation in the summertime, You know, if I could find us a little row of just a few stumps, you know, out there offshore, it can be on just a bare flat. Brush piles. Brush piles give excellent isolation. You know why I want isolation? I want to pull up and throw it at a target.
OK, Another scenario doesn't have to be isolation is deep grass. If a fishery has deep grass, a lot of times those fish get done spawning. They're going to come out there and get at the deepest available cover. The furthest out grass is an excellent place to look. Any kind of extra deep water, meaning the grass. So if you have this huge sloth of grass, huge Cove of grass. Promise you if you find some of the deepest water meeting it, it's probably a good spot, a point on the grass, a hard spot just outside the grass could be an excellent place.
Your traditional ledges, you know any kind of hump offshore next to a river channel, they just want to get off, they want to get offshore. So that's kind of what I'm looking for and I'll start if I'm fortunate to really be in tune with the fishery and I knew that this Cove or Bay or Creek Had a lot of fish in in the spring. Well, they're still around. They're migrating now back out. Further in that Creek. So I'll start with a place that I know has a good population. I'll go from there.
So this is my kind of go to guys, this is. Gosh, I don't know how many fish I've weighed in on this particular worm. This is the Missile Baits Magic Worm, and this is a blue back secret color. It looks like a bluegill, it looks like a yellow perch. It looks just so natural in the water. It gets to me so many bites, has three different colors going on, but it's so natural looking it's unbelievable. But this is a 6 inch Missile Baits, Magic Worm.
Couple little things I'm going to talk to you about. I use a Geecrack Neko hack. So what what this is, This is a clear a clear deal. It goes through the worm and on the top side it has just a little slit where you put the hook through. It keeps your hook stationary. What this does guys, it gives me definite hooking up potential. The hooks not folding over and it really stops a lot of the worm folding over the hook. So a lot of times a fish will come just aggressively, they'll bite it. It will double the worm over the hook a lot and you won't get a good hook up ratio.
This this little deal here from Geecrack, I'm not sponsored by them at all. It's a really cool little deal. You need to check it out. I got a 3/64 oz weight in here. I can fish this pretty deep and here's a little thing guys that I do. This is something that you might want to try for yourself. I got a little glass bead rattle in here. You could barely hear it. But guys, you get into the summer and a fish follows it down. Like if you're fortunate to see it on live scope or if you just know you're throwing to a target as a live fish, They don't bite it on initial fall. You sit there and shake this a little bit. That little bit of clicking, I think draws them in. Just something I'm doing. It could be all in my head, but I think it's a little trick for the Neko rig that's kind of overlooked.
This is a special wacky hook. From Hayabusa. Has very very very light titanium. Weedguard here that I'll I'll spread out. And just gives me just a little bit, this is not something I'm really going to throw and brush or straighten the brush. I'll switch over to the Spin Muscle Guard hook. But this is like your deep grass, all that kind of stuff we were talking about. But guys, something about this worm, it just gets it done.
10 LB P-Line fluorocarbon. I'll go up to 12 at times in the summer, but 10 lbs probably my mainstay 10 LB braid from P-Line. And this is on my Neko rod. It's called the Neko rod. It's A 7'1" medium heavy from Fitzgerald's my signature series rod I designed exclusively for this presentation, the Neko rig, excellent rod. I could cast this a mile. I could lift up a lot of line. It has an excellent light tip. I have it on a SPRO Jason Christie Elite MG3000 reel.
Guys this deal right here. I weigh so many fish on into the summer. You need to check this out. You need to apply this some way on your fishery back home. Look for some of those things we talked about and add to it at your will, and hopefully this is going to help you catch more fish and be more successful. On the water this summer.
