In its essence,
the jig is one of the oldest and most effective
fish catching lures out there.
A jig’s purpose
is to have enough weight to take the bait down
into the strike zone when
fish are on or close to the bottom and relatively
concentrated on structure.
The ultra-short distance
between weight and bait allows preciseness
in presentation you
can’t
get with the weight, leader and hook of the
Lindy rig.
Jigs
are versatile. Many of the truly great anglers
you can name would
choose
a jig if
they could
use just one presentation for the rest
of their lives. Jigs are good for fishing from
the shoreline
to deep water. They can be used on farm
ponds,
lakes, rivers and reservoirs. They catch
everything from bluegills, crappies and
perch to walleyes,
smallmouth bass and northern pike. They
can be cast and brought back to the boat with
a variety
of retrieves, from an aggressive snap-and-drop
to dragging one on the bottom at a snail’s
pace. Some days it seems you can catch walleyes
by trolling a spark plug with hooks, but
most days their mood is neutral to negative.
You’ve
got to entice them to bite. On those days,
a jig is your best bet more often than
not. Nine times out of 10, a simple
ball jig like a Lindy Fuzzy-E-Grub will do the
trick. The round head works well on soft muck
bottoms like you find in a river or hard bottoms
of sand, gravel and rock.
They cut through current
well enough to reach the bottom where most
fish live. The bigger,
river-oriented jigs are flatter to make them
more hydrodynamic in order to slice through
moving water.
You can cover the water column
by choosing the right weight, from an eighth-ounce
for
the shallows,
to three-eighths, five-eighths or an ounce
for deep water and heavy current. Overall
sales
figures
bear out the fact jigs weighing one-quarter
of an ounce are the most used because they
work
well in that fish-producing zone from 10
to 20 feet. The key to successful jigging is
to
use
enough weight to stay on the bottom.
One-sixteenth
of an ounce balances well with slip-bobber
rigs for working the top of windy
reefs or still-fishing feeding flats at
night. The lesson learned here is you should
have
a variety of sizes of ball-style jigs in
the tackle
box.
Remember all those articles
you read about using pliers to bend the hook
out slightly
to open
the gap in order to improve hooksets?
Lindy designers pondered why we were bombarded
with requests
from angler/consumers to make one for
them.
The result is the new MAX GAP® jigs
with a 10-percent wider gap than regular
jigs. The key to hooking
fish is the gap between the hook point
and the eyelet - the bigger the gap,
the higher the fish
catching percentage.
MAX GAP jigs also
take advantage of another design change
learned through trial and
error. In the
past, most light jigs were made with
small hooks. But with the MAX GAP jigs,
even
the one-sixteenth
ounce jig sports a 1/0 wide bite hook
to improve fish-grabbing and fish-holding
power. Heavier
jig sizes have 2/0 hooks to better accommodate
live bait and plastic trailers.
Our experience
with jig design over the years has brought
two other improvements
to the
MAX GAP jigs. First, they’re
available as Rattlin' MAX GAP for dingy
water and
low-light conditions.
For another, they come with hooks in
Bleeding-Bait red, a bite-enticing
color which walleyes really
seem to like. Add in Techni-Glo colored
heads and you’ve got a fish attracting,
fish hooking, multi-purpose tool.
Specialty
jigs have special purposes. It was
only a couple of years ago that
Lindy
introduced
the NO-SNAGG Timb’r Rock Jig,
which was the design of Northwood’s
walleye guide, Greg Bohn. With a 7-strand
wire
snag guard that
allows you to fish in the thickest
brush, the NO-SNAGG jigs gets you to
where the
big fish
live without snagging, scaring off
the fish and forcing you to break off
the
jig and lose precious
time retying.
Bohn also designed the
NO-SNAGG Veg-E-Jig, which has the eye
toward the front,
a streamlined body,
and the wire hook guard to guide the
jig through weeds.
Pick the right style
then experiment with action, color and rattles.
Try
scent. Add
a plastic
trailer like Lindy’s new Munchies
Thumpin’ Grub.
The Munchies Thumpin’ Grub
has been designed with a unique swirl-type
triple tail that pulsates
and throbs even with a slow retrieve.
Have
different people use different
combinations of all of the variables
until you hit
on the one that works. Let the
fish tell you
what
they want. When someone gets the
first fish, analyze
what worked and then repeat it.
Remember,
too, that conditions like water clarity, sunlight,
wind
and
other factors
can change
throughout the day and effect
fish behavior. If one combination
of jig color and action stops
working, make a change. |
