merc1997

tom made a great statement about a jig being a big bass bait. i can also tell you from my years of fishing that i have caught, at least ten to one, big bass on a jig than all other lures combined. the close seconds would be a big worm, a jerk bait in the winter, and a big six inch plastic crawdad fished on a jig head in the late summer. i have stated it before, and i state it again, in my opinion, a jig is the best fishing tool in the tackle box! bo

the belly that i am talking about is the one that starts at your rod tip to the water. you line needs to belly down from your rod tip to the water. by doing this, you will not impede the drop on your lure. if i knew how to post a video on here, i would make a video to show what i am talking about. i watch many fisherman fish their lures, even spoons, and their fishing line from the rod tip to the water is in a straight line. this means you always have tension on your lure which will cause it to swing back toward you and not fall straight to the bottom. sometimes with worms or jigs a swinging motion can be effective. but, with lures such as a spoon, a swinging motion will not let the spoon flutter and dart. take your drawing, and flip it upside down. your jig on the bottom is your rod tip. the lines are your fishing line, and the water surface is where your fishing line is entering the water. now, you can see you have made a belly in your line, but you are in contact with your bait. if you have slack line laying on top of the water, you do not want that. the correct way is to have belly in your line to the point of contact with the water. your bait will fall straight down, but you will still be able to feel a bite. hope this will clarify what i am trying to say.bo

there are two ways to let a jig sink. one is with tension on the line, and that will result in a pendulem fall. the other way is to keep a belly in your line as the jig is falling, and this will let the jig fall more vertical, but still be in touch enough to feel a bite. to keep a belly in your line, it must start at the rod tip and continue to where the line enters the water. you must feed line and/or lower you rod tip as the jig is falling. you use this same method when fishing a spoon. you will still be able to feel bites when using braid with this method.bo

catching most of your bass right in the bottom and not on the fall can be from a number of factors. topography of the waters you fish can be a factor. and species of bass you are targeting can be a factor. brownies are most often caught on the bottom, and they like to pin their prey to the bottom first many times. kentuckies caught on the bottom on flatter terrain will often times pin the bait to the bottom initially also. when the bass are pinning the bait to the bottom first, that is when you have to develop a knack of knowing that is what they are doing, and wait for the second feel to set the hook. on lakes with vertical bluffs, and or trees, bass using these types of structure will most often be caught with the bait falling. they catch the bait instead of picking it up. even most brownies i catch on bluffs catch the bait on the fall.bo

from my many years of fishing experience yes they can. each head size gets bigger as they get heavier. just take any brand of jig and set a 1/4oz. next to the 3/8oz. model. there is quite a difference in the head profile. often time here on table rock, my partner and i will start out with one using a 1/4oz jig with a 1/4oz slip sinker, and the other will start out with a 3/8oz jig with an 1/8oz sinker to see which set up the bass like the best. a bigger percentage of the time, one set up will get bit, and the other one will not, necessitating one of us to change. the last time i was at falcon, i started out with a 1/2oz jig and was not getting any bites. i changed to a 1/4oz jig with a 1/4oz. slip sinker and just wore them out. i did not change areas in between, but refished where i did not have a bite on the 1/2oz jig. used the same skirt and trailer on both setups. so, yes, the look of the profile of the bait you are using does make a difference to the bass, in my opinion. bo

i know that many people have a confidence factor in using painted weights. i am not too interested in having the bass hit my sinker. i rarely use a jig with paint on it either. if you have your skirt and your trailer, that is all the color you need. i have said this before, and i will restate it again. putting your bait the right depth at the right speed will put more fish in the boat for you than any specific color will. one of my fishing buddies uses a brown plastic crawdad all the time. his outlook is," if a bass can not find a brown crawdad, they are going to starve to death. it is more important to be putting your bait in the right place at the right speed." i will admit that painted weights and jig heads do look pretty. bo

i like your idea of getting your speed right to make the fish bite. but, here is a question. what do you do when you need the speed of your 1/2oz jig, but the bass will not hit the bigger profile of the 1/2oz., as opposed the smaller profile of the 3/8oz.??? that is the thing with jigs. the heavier the weight of the jig, the bigger the profile gets because the head size is bigger. the solution to the problem is to use a 1/4oz. jig with a slip sinker added to your line to get the fall rate you desire. you are still maintaining the smaller profile, but can attain the correct fall rate.bo

i use a bead underneath a slip sinker quite often. i do not use it for color or sound. i use a donut type bead. they have a bigger hole than a standard bead, and your knot will slip through the hole in the bead. this prevents the sinker from beating and damaging your knot. bo

here are my keys to help with the learning curve of fishing. first, to catch bass you obviously have to be fishing where the bass are. so, the first step is to learn the seasonal patterns of the bass. tom young's cosmic clock is a great place to start. bass will always be where the food supply is. the other important thing is to fish at the right depth at the right speed to get a reaction strike or reflex strike. when bass are actively feeding speed is not as critical, but most of our fishing time, bass are more in a nuetral mood and speed is a critical factor is enticing a strike. hope this might help with your learning curve. bo

bo amazing that ethel continued to grow at a normal rate even though she was in an aquarium. fish are animals just as cattle, chickens or anything else. growth has nothing to do with free roaming space. if that was so, why do they raise chickens in a closed environment? genetics of course is going to play a major factor in the size of any bass. i will state again that you would have to have a well managed pond, small lake, tank or what ever. managing would include trimming the population down to the ones with the best growing genes. they do the same thing now on deer farms. they keep bucks in a contained environment, where all the feeding is controlled to grow a bigger, better buckbo.

i catch bass every year on an old wooden metal lipped brown bomber. also, a cotton cordel big o, and several others. fishing lures are tools, and good fishing tools will continue to produce fish year after year. bo

here on table rock we too have problems with people pulling right in on you while fishing a spot. but, the real curse is the big cruisers running by withing casting distance and swamping you. i finally lost my temper this summer when the same boat came by the third time. i saw him coming in time to grab my spooning rod out of the locker. when he came by, i cut loose. knocked out on of his fancy windows. of course he stopped and started cussing and was going to call the water patrol. to which i responded, that i would be glad for him to call the water patrol to explain why he had came by our boat within casting distance for the third time. guess i just did not see you, just like you did not see us the other two times you came by. he started up and left, busted window and all. probably was not the right thing to do, but sometimes you just get enough. bo

perhaps you are not familar with ethyl that was in the bass pro shop aquarium. ethyl came from lake fork. ethyl grew to quite a very big size before she died. i do not recall the exact weight, but it was considerably bigger than her original weigh when first caught from fork. so, i think you might want to rethink your statement about smaller bodies of water. just as ethyl grew in bass pro shops aquarium, a bass in the right small body of water, that is managed correctly, and has the right food supply, could reach a weight of 20lbs. plus. of course, it would have to be a flmb.bo

i have to laugh. in my many years of fishing, there are many more 8's caught in the coffee shop than on the water. there are way too many people that catch a nice 8lber, and not weigh it, but in their eyes, it was 8lbs. i just have seen it way too many times. when you catch quite a few big ones every year since the 60's, you get pretty good at telling the weight of a bass just looking at it. but, most people do not have that experience. hence, there are lots of 8's caught. bo

it takes a very special lake to produce bass of world record size. wrb has told us that. falcon is a great example. it has everything going for it. year round growing season, food, cover, but there are draw backs. fishing pressure is one. remember wrb stating the age of around 12 to reach maximum potential. the other problem with falcon is water levels. if the water could be left 35 to 40 feet higher than it is now for a 12 year period, you just might see a world record if you could get it out of the jungle. years ago, i know there were a few nlmb here in table rock lake pushing 20lbs. i have seen a picture of two bass that were gigged out of the roaring river arm during the winter that went 17lbs. and 19lbs. those bass were weighed, and i do know the person that gigged them. they went on the dinner table. table rock is lucky to produce a 9lb. bass anymore. the lmb virus virtually wiped out the lake, and polution and other things will prevent table rock from producing numbers of giant fish it use to. i am sure that wrb is right about cali. chances usless they start stocking trout again. bo

when i use thread to tie up hair jigs, to finish off the tie, here is what i do. keep about a 8 inch piece of thread. before you finish all of your wraps, double your loose piece of thread and lay it across your wraps. finish wrapping around the loop of thread. cut your wrapping thread, and put the end of it through the loop sticking out from underneath your wrap. now take the tag end of the loop of loose thread and pull your wrap end back underneath the wraps. it will never come loose, and there is not any need of gluing or anything.hope this might help with your tying. i also use a heavy nylon thread. bo

i use mostly slip on skirts. for rubber material, i make my own, and i tie the skirt with rubber. you can still take the skirt on and off, but it still has great flair. i just like the flexibility of changing colors on the fly. plus, with my jigs, you might still be fishing with same one for several months. when the skirt gets eaten off, i just slip on a new skirt. bo

tom i really do not know of any jigs on the market that are designed with the hook pointing down. i have tinkered with that design in the past, and the bottom jaw of a bass is not a good target to try to hook. i was trying to get the person to put a hook point against say a table top. then lift up the eyelet like it would follow your line on a hookset. one can easily see that the window for the hook point to penetrate the lower jaw is very minimal. the hook point almost instantly starts to travel away from the target area. i was just trying to get the point across that an upside down hook is not very effective unless there is some way that it will rotate all the way to vertical from the upside down position. the reason that i had experimented with an upside down hook is because when you do hook a big bass in the lower jaw, they are very easy to get in. by the bass's on resistance, they turn themselves upside down during the fight, and you you have very little trouble bringing them in after you get them upside down.

put the hook point down on a flt surface and then pull the eyelet of the jig up, as it would travel setting the hook. you will notice that almost immediately the hook point is traveling away from your target area where it would be hooking. there are advantages of hooking a bass in the lower jaw. you can power them upside down during the fight, and then they are quite easy to bring in. with all that stated the roof of a bass's mouth is thebest target area. bo

i know that many of the jigs on the market today come with some type of trailer keeper. even when using a plastic trailer on a jig, i still hang it just as you would pork. here is a way for you to see the difference in how your trailer reacts. use the same jig. thread your trailer onto the hook shank. put in the water and swim it and jig it up and down letting it settle to the bottom. now hang the same trailer on the hook like pork and repeat. you will find that your trialer has much more action when hung. when on the hook shank the head blocks water flow off of the trailer causing it to have less action. bo

here are some of my thoughts about skirts, and what they are made out of. silicone is the most popular because of all the colors that can be produced that can not be done with rubber. i like to use slip on skirts, whether rubber or silicone, just from the standpoint of being more versatile in doing so. my jigs last long enough that the skirt will be eaten off long before it is lost is another reason. i am not against hand tied jigs at all. a better flare can be obtained with rubber material, unless they skirt is tied with the skirt material itself. then, it has the same function as hand tied, but can be changed. either way from a manufacturing standpoint, both are more labor intensive to do and add to the cost of the product. hair of course must be tied. because of labor costs, many manufactures just do not offer it anymore, and marketing has made it become less desireable to the fisherman, not the fish. i use all three materials, and i do so based on what the bass are eating, and whether they want a fuller profile bait or a more slender one. i still use hair jigs that i tie for my own use. the amount of hair that you use will also have an effect on the profile of your jig. the number of big bass that i have caught over the years is probably pretty even between rubber and hair. silicone lags way behind. i am pretty much f the opinion that the jig head could be lead without paint. i just need the basic color to come out with my skirt and trailer. the vast array of colors we have now is much more to catch fisherman than it is the fish. i sell jigs and am telling honestly about colors. we have to sell the consumer first. for me, i would be worried a lot more about the performance of my jig than the colors. does it actually hook accurately, or is it hooking all over the mouth?? is it really snagproof, or does it take at least 6 jigs or more to fish an outing. just some of my thoughts about jigs and skirts. bo

some type of jighead. what is trailing it would depend on the situation. could be jig and pork. jig with worm, grub, plastic crawdad,without a skirt. there are just too many ways to use a jig to list. bo

i was going to answer, but tom has already covered all the answers. great answers as usual tom. and, i would also say that you did a much better job explaining it than what i would have done. bo

i would imagine that is is actually a suspender, but like other suspending baits do, is to float up. i will dig one out and use it just like a suspending jerk bait, and on the right day, it will outfish anything else you can throw. bo