Dave Mull uses items that he already has in his tackle box to recreate some of the hottest finesse bass rigs without spending a dime.

If you’re not an ice fisherman, you may be spending a good portion of your winter like me, watching online fishing videos. You can see hour after hour of anglers of all skill levels catching fish after fish on rigs that you don’t have in your tackle box. It can be so tempting to just click on the websites and punch in your credit card number to stock up on every new lure you see.

So, let’s take a look at a couple of finesse-y rigs that are current stars of YouTube: the Damiki rig and a Jika-rigged tube bait. These rigs don’t make much noise, acting like a gamefish’s typical prey. They don’t call a lot of attention to themselves, but act like minnows and crayfish, going about their daily business, trying not to get eaten. They are outstanding finesse rigs.

Damiki rig

Basically a soft plastic jerkbait on an open-hook jig, the rig got its name because the original featured a jighead and Armor Shad from the Damiki company. I watched a YouTuber who calls himself BassGeek catch a giant smallmouth somewhere down south on a 1/2-ounce Drophead jighead from Ledgehead Lures, and searched Dropheads online. Turns out they cost $7.25 for a three-pack. I didn’t order any—yet. I also scanned for the Damiki Armor Shads, which look like your basic 3-inch Baby Fluke.

BassGeek fished a 1/2-ounce Drophead on 6-pound fluorocarbon and a medium action rod—seems like too light a setup for a 1/2-ounce jighead, but he liked it plummeting down to the school 40 feet deep and being able to keep it directly below his rod tip when the wind pushed his boat around a bit. Once the lure was down there, his main approach was to let it hover and quiver. Occasionally, he’d trigger bites from the fish he saw on his graph by giving the reel handle a quick turn.

Two important things about the jighead. First, it should have a 90-degree hook eyelet—the eyelet should be sticking straight up from the top of the head. That helps keep it hanging horizontally amongst your target fish. Second, it ought to have realistic eyeballs to look more like a real minnow.

I was sorely tempted to buy some Dropheads and Damiki Armor Shads, but fought off the urge. I perused my tackle and found a pack of VMC Mooneye Jigs and one paired nicely with a trimmed Zoom Fluke in the baby bass pattern. I also discovered a three-pack of 1/4-ounce jigheads in the watermelon color from Revenge Baits. These matched magnificently with a Mud-Minnow-pattern Hula StickZ from Z-Man that I trimmed to 3 inches. I’m already envisioning pulling some big bass over the side of the kayak from a couple of deep, clear lakes this spring.

Jika tubes

The Jika rig (properly pronounced ZEE-ka rig) is a fairly recent Japanese import that has a free-swinging weight below a hook, usually rigged weedless into a plastic bait. Fortunately I already had a good supply of tungsten drop-shot weights from Motley Fishing. They are the least-expensive tungsten weights I could find. I also have a bunch of Mizmo and Cruncher tubes that I bought last March at the Ultimate Outdoors Show in Grand Rapids, Michigan. Having the tubes was fortunate, because although the Jika can be used with about any soft plastic, I found a YouTube video that showed how it works with a plastic tube lure.

The excellent, short video on the AnglingBuzz channel features Capt. Ben Wolfe of Sport Fish Michigan, which is a group of guides and charter captains. Capt. Wolfe shows succinctly how to rig a cylindrical drop-shot weight on a split ring that goes through the eyelet of an extra wide-gap hook, with a tube Texas-rigged on the hook. Man, the underwater footage of that tube bouncing just about the bottom made me wish I could jump in the water and eat it. It just looked great. Plus, Capt. Wolfe points out the Jika setup lets the weight directly contact the bottom, giving the angler better feel than a jighead rigged inside the plastic would. A bonus is the whole rig is heavy enough to cast on a baitcast combo.

Some Jika rigs have two split rings; some have one. I rigged this Cruncher Tube for the picture (bottom rig) with just one split ring because that’s how Capt. Wolfe did it. I really am looking forward to targeting smallmouths with this just as soon as possible.

If you’re like me, I bet you already envision a big black bass, halfway out of the water, trying to shake free of one of these rigs.

Learn more of the latest fishing techniques in the February issue of MidWest Outdoors, available the first full week of February at the newsstand or by subscribing on our website.