Strike detection is the key to catching bass on jigs, the bass must have the jig in it's mouth to set the hook.
Sounds like a stupid statement, but every angler who fishes with jigs, miss a high % of strike from big bass and catch a higher % of smaller bass on jigs. There is a reason for this and to understand why simply try bed* fishing with a jig and watch a big bass strike your jig, you rarely feel anything. The smaller bass has a smaller mouth and can't generate enough water volume to vacuume the jig off the bottom and into it's mouth, they must bite the jig with their lips, then make a second effort to get the jig back into the crunchers to kill it. Bed bass have no intent on eating the jig, they want to kill it because a crawdad is a egg eater and a threat to the nest. The female bass over 7 lbs have a big mouth and big gills that can easily vacuume in the jig to the back of it's mouth, crunch it to kill and reject it very fast, no secondary bites.
You watch the big bass angle down near the jig, sometimes see a white flash to indicate the strike has occurred and try to set the hook without feeling the line move, you see it, but don't feel it! With practice to adjust your timing and hook setting technique the % of missing goes down, but you still miss a lot of strikes that you see happening.
Now try casting over 60 feet away from the boat, you can't see the bass strike and often may not feel a strike.
How do you get a hook set if you don't know the big bass has the jig in it's mouth? The bass must want to eat the jig, not just strike and reject it, or the hook must penetrate mouth tissue when the bass strike to kill the jig and the jig gets hung up in the basses big mouth for a moment , then you feel something when the bass either continues eating the jig or trying to reject it by shaking it loose. We catch most big bass when they actually eat the jig and don't reject it. Big bass are wary bass and have life learning experiences to reject anything that doesn't feel or taste right. Jigs have a lead head molded onto a sharp hook and it's doesn't feel right to big bass, so they reject them often. If the hook doesn't snag the upper mouth tissue or the ridge behind their big tough upper lip, the jig gets rejected cleanly, just like the big bed bass does while you are watching the strike happen, except you don't see it happen when casting a distance.
This is why the jig design and hook position is critical when casting jigs and retrieving further away from you than a 45 degree angle outward, the horizontal zone.
Tom
* I rarely intentionally target big bass on beds, not that it isn't fun or challenging, it's both. The lakes I fish are too small for the intense fishing pressure these big rare bass must face each spawning season. I focus on the staging period during pre spawn in deeper water, when the big bas are eating Crawdads, not trying to kill them. The big bass are very healthy and strong during pre spawn. It's a personal choice.
