The Foxtail

How it came about

If you’ve been following along, you know that in our last posting we talked about The Hair Jig Perfected. So, if you’ve already red that or your just plan a hair jig fanatic than you’re here for good reason. Previously we talked about all thing’s hair jigs, how to rig them, how to fish them, and just how downright effective they can be. When it comes to a tough pre spawn smallmouth bite there isn’t a lure out there that is more effective than the hair jig. So, what happens when you run into a tough bite during the summer months? Hair jigs are super affective, but their versatility can be somewhat limited.

Having grown up fishing Lake Champlain and the St. Lawrence River I am by no means a stranger to the effectiveness of the hair jig, but always found myself wondering how I could capitalize on the effectiveness of the hair jig all year long and in many different scenarios. What if you could effectively fish a hair jig on a drop shot, a ned rig, or on a multitude of jig head weights? This is where Rabid Baits comes into play!

The Ned Rig

Let’s Start with the foxtail, it has the action of a hair jig but with the versatility of a soft plastic and built like a Ned Rig. If your familiar with fishing ned rigs and hair jigs I can tell you your mind is probably racing with literally hundreds of rigging options but I’m just going to cover a few of our favorites here. Let’s start with the elephant in the room, the ned rig! Everybody knows what makes the ned rig so darn effective is its small profile and floating plastic. We all remember when the ned rig first started getting big it was whose bait “stood up against the competition” i.e., who’s bait had the most buoyancy. It’s the action where the bait literally lands horizontal on the bottom, but the plastic has enough buoyancy to lift the hook into a vertical position. Its that action there that literally drives fish crazy and what most people look for in a ned rig. But there is only so much buoyancy you can add to plastic until you start to drastically decrease the durability.

With Rabid Baits addition of fur to the Ned Rig it in turn increased the buoyancy of the lure. Not only does the fur increase the buoyancy but the use of Artic Fox fur gives it an action that simply cannot be matched. If you haven’t seen the videos of this thing under water yet, you need to check them out here.

The Damiki Rig

The addition of the fur not only makes this one of the best ned rigs on the market, but it also makes one heck of a Damiki Rig. You start by Rigging the foxtail on a ¼ oz. fisheye jig head with a 90-degree tie and you have one deadly tool that suspended bass cannot resist. The pulsating action of the fur while it is being hopped and swum through the water column is something that just cannot be matched. Whether you’re fishing for smallmouth up north, spots in the south, or even trout fishing, the Foxtail is something that you need to have in your arsenal.