I have had my eyes opened over the course of the last year as to the effectiveness of the Tokyo Rig for presenting soft plastic baits to bass. I’ve been especially excited about the Heavy Duty Flipping Hook version of the VMC Tokyo Rig after watching Ryan DeChaine and Dan Quinn pound fish out deep on video last fall. One challenge I’ve specifically had is presenting a small swimbait efficiently to bass deeper than 30 feet in the winter.
I’ve caught bass out to 60 feet and maintaining bottom contact with a smaller swimbait in the winter is a chore. You can barely reel the bait and have to start and stop all the time. It’s hard to get a small swimbait to rig correctly on a bigger 1-ounce jighead. But with the Tokyo Rig Heavy Duty Flipping Hook, I can put a 3 3/4-inch swimbait on a 3/0 or 4/0 hook with a 3/4 or 1-ounce weight under it and keep it pegged and swimming right on the bottom where a lot of bass lay when the water gets really cold.
I like that it’s easy to put whatever weight you want on the Tokyo Rig wire quickly and easily which makes it nice if one day you want to fish in 20 feet and another you want to fish in 40. You just put the weight on that fits how deep you’re going to be fishing that day. And with the new VMC Tungsten Slider Weights, you get a nice compact profile that will crawl over the rocks and let the swimbait swim perfectly.
The beauty of the VMC Tokyo Rig Heavy Duty Flipping Hook is the weight will stay glued to the bottom, but the bait is above it just enough, that it can swim and work very naturally without turning over or swimming on its side when it hits something. So you get a nice little presentation that will catch and grab and dart around just like a real baitfish or crayfish down around the bottom.
You can reel the bait steadily and maintain a solid bottom contact the whole retrieve which for me has been paramount for getting bites consistently.
Because the VMC Tokyo Rig Heavy Duty Flipping Hook employs a ring and swivel, the whole rig compacts easily to get tremendous hookups, many times without the weight interfering with the strike. They just get all hook and stay pinned up in my experience. I love how well swimbait fish hook up on this rig—like “real-hard-to-get-unhooked” good. It’s like fishing a jig hook swimbait without having all the weight in the head.
I’ve had early success with this hook and weight combo on the new VMC Tokyo Rig Heavy Flipping Hook version with the new VMC Tungsten Slider Weights. The weight crawls easily over rock and cover and when the fish tag it, they are hooked. And the hook holds a solid swimbait so well. I’ve used the same swimbait to catch a bunch of bass in several trips. That’s been really nice.
I’ve caught them as deep as 35 feet consistently on it. So I’m excited to play with bigger swimbaits, different weights and even have some ideas I’m sharing with VMC on how to extend the line more to suit swimbait anglers.
We’ve already shown a lot of applications for using the Tokyo Rig on Wired2fish. This new Heavy Flipping Hook model will give anglers options to punch mats up shallow, fish big plastics offshore and swim swimbaits out deep with a beefy hook that holds plastics very well with the molded keeper.
If you want to see the Tokyo Rig in action, check out these videos:
- The Tokyo Rig busts bass out of matted grass
- Mike Iaconelli gives his take on Tokyo Rigs
- See huge bass getting caught Tokyo Rigging big worms offshore
To buy the new VMC Tokyo Rig Heavy Duty Flipping Hook, visit:
