Fishing Pressure Proof

Renowned anglers reveal their stealthiest soft plastics tricks for tough bites

Ladson, SC (October 31, 2024) - “Small baits have put me on a lot of tournament-winning bites,” notes Marty Hughes, a renowned kayak angler and veteran Bassmaster Kayak Series competitor. “Not just in fall, but anytime the bite gets tough, my first move is often to slow down and scale back to ultra finesse baits.”

Likewise, when fishing turns tough in October and November, the legendary Ned Kehde downsizes his offerings, shifting from classic finesse baits to the next scale of micro. Kehde’s famed Midwest Finesse fishing journals, which offer PhD levels of bass-catching intel, recently revealed intriguing new microbait methods. By scaling back from his usual finesse rigs to morsels barely exceeding 2-inches, Kehde and friends have continued catching over 10 bass per hour—this on some of the heaviest pressured reservoirs near Kansas City.

Indeed, while legions of anglers toss traditional lures, Hughes and Kehde roll with tiny baits seemingly more suited to catching crappie—and they absolutely clean house. Run a larger lure by several dozen snouts, they say, and you might be lucky to connect once or twice. Pitch a little jig and lively ElaZtech® snack instead, and catch rates often exceed all expectations.

Hughes' go-to baby crayfish imitations (L to R): LarvaZ, Micro TRD and Micro GOAT.

Mudbug Morsels
This September, Hughes earned Angler of the Year honors at the Nebraska State Kayak Bass Fishing Championship, catching 132 smallmouth bass while casting a tiny crayfish imitation half the size of a standard Ned rig.

“A lot of our Nebraska lakes have really tough bass fishing, because we’ve got so many super skilled anglers all working the same handful of lakes,” says Hughes. “Even for big fish, the key here can be to match your micro-sized presentation to the conditions. One unbeatable fact about downsizing . . . unlike traditional baits, the micro stuff is almost immune to fishing pressure."

While fishing the kayak championship at Lake McConaughy— a sprawling sandhill reservoir in western Nebraska— Hughes conceived a sneaky little crayfish pattern. “I quickly found schools of smallmouths stationed in deep water along the dam,” recalls Hughes. “Some of the fish were periodically moving up to feed on baby crawfish in the shallow riprap. Each time you’d catch one, the bass would spit up a claw or pieces of small crayfish. This little clue led me to tap the pattern with a micro-sized Z-Man® Micro GOAT™—a 1-3/4-inch twin kicker-tail bait with a ribbed, slightly flattened body. This cool little critter does a super convincing crayfish dance and mimics the motions and silhouette of a baby craw like nothing else.”

Leaning on the Micro GOAT’s buoyant, stand-up qualities, Hughes swam the morsel on a 1/15-ounce Micro Finesse ShroomZ™ jighead. To unleash the jig and Micro GOAT’s full freedom of rocking and rising motions, Hughes employed a loop knot. Frequently, he would let the bait hover and then “soak” in place between rocks, twin kicker tails ascending and waving ever-seductively.

“When you pause this bait, its buoyancy prompts the claws to rise and hover, where they’re always visible and look totally alive to any bass in the neighborhood,” believes Hughes.
“Unless you want to catch loads of other fish, though, you can only do this for bass when hordes of panfish aren’t around. But when bass are zoned into small forage—which happens way more often than we realize—these little 2-inch baits become hero fish catchers. And because they’re made from buoyant, durable ElaZtech, they stay out of rocky snags a little better and hold up to dozens of bites per bait.”

Finesse bladed jigs perfectly mimic bite-sized shad, including (L to R) ChatterBait Micro, Flashback Mini & MiniMax.

Micro Chatters
A longtime fan of Z-Man ChatterBait® bladed jigs, such as the JackHammer™ and new Tungsten EVO™, Hughes scales back to bite-sized bladed jigs when faced with excessive fishing pressure.

On a recent October outing, Hughes identified schools of 2- to 3-inch shad that had begun pushing into coves and creek arms—a common fall pattern. After scratching out a couple fish on a ChatterBait JackHammer and a Neko-rig, he continued watching bigger bass bust on the shad but hesitate to eat his larger lures. “I kept pondering what I could tie on that might better resemble these baby shad?” he said.

“Finally, I had an idea to tie up a white ChatterBait MiniMax™ dressed with a Drop KickerZ™ in the always-productive “The Deal” pattern. (The Drop KickerZ is a new multifunctional finesse bait equipped with a bulbous wedge tail.)

“Between the thumbnail sized blade and the Drop KickerZ’ tail, I could feel the lure’s pulses throughout the rod. Everything felt right,” he continued. “Didn’t take long before bass started to smack it.

The key to getting good bites was throwing the MiniMax up into the grass edges where bass were cornering pods of shad. In a half mile of shoreline, Hughes’ little Chatter combo kicked out 19 bass, including several good ones.

Scaling back even further, Hughes further extols the powers of Z-Man’s tiniest bladed jig, the diminutive, 1/16-ounce ChatterBait Flashback Mini™. “On an outing about a week ago, I caught 38 largemouth bass on this tiny ChatterBait, which perfectly matched the baitfish hatch. Good reminder that the best bladed jigs can come in all shapes and sizes!”

The venerable Ned Kehde believes micro sized ElaZtech baits produce consistent bites, spring through fall.

Ned Goes Nano
Fishing equally challenging Kansas impoundments, Kehde and friends almost magically averaged over 100 bass per four-hour outing for years—until fishing turned tougher in recent seasons. That’s when he took things to another level of downsized.

To the chagrin of tournament anglers, Kehde has long advocated the use of tiny 1/16-ounce jigheads with #4 or smaller hooks. “I’ve never had an issue hooking even big bass with this jig,” suggests the famed finesse angler. (Kehde’s favorites include the OG Mushroom™, Finesse ShroomZ™ and Micro Finesse ShroomZ.) And I believe these smaller hooks are much gentler on the bass and do potentially less damage than larger sizes.”

This fall, Kehde has continually posted glowing reports while casting both a 1-3/4-inch Micro TRD™ as well as a “radically shortened” (3-inch) Junebug pattern Finesse WormZ™—each affixed to a 1/15- or 1/20-ounce Micro Finesse ShroomZ jig. Vibrant baby blue (self-painted with fingernail polish) and fire-engine red jigheads remain Kehde’s favorite colors. The Micro TRD has proven to be super effective, says Kehde, for back-of-the-boat anglers, particularly while slowly dragging or “strolling” behind the boat.

Ned's micro picks include (T to B) the Finesse WormZ, Slim SwimZ and GrubZ.

Overlooked by today’s bass fans, Kehde has also logged impressive catches with a simple 3-inch curly-tailed, pearl-pattern GrubZ™ pinned to the same 1/15-ounce jigheads. While Kehde often retrieves the Finesse WormZ with a swim-and-shake cadence, the GrubZ excels with a slow-swim or swim-and-pause retrieve, typically in 2 to 8 feet of water. Kehde works each of these baits with his favorite finesse wand, a 5’4” Drew’s Ultimate Ned Rig Rod, which he believes yields exceptional bite detection.

Among his September and October journals, Kehde has chronicled numerous impressive catches, easily maintaining his average of ten bass per hour—and one outing that produced 126 largemouth bass in 4 hours. Often, Kehde and friends catch dozens to over 100 fish on a single ElaZtech bait-and-jig combo.

"I’m not a tournament guy, so fishing for five big bites per day just doesn’t seem like the best way to enjoy the sport,” says Kehde. “For us, it’s more about constant action and keeping rods bent, rather than praying for that one giant bass.”