Jigs Fishing For The Novice

[emjaysmit]

Well I download quite a bit of content off the net before I venture out to start a specific application. Got a tackleshop and have endless hours of watching on the bigscreen as my pc is also connected to the flat screen and I have a nice chillout lounge for customers in the shop where I spend alot of my time. I always kept hearing of guys fishing Jigs with 4 or so amber strands and saw the most popular Jigs by far was Black/Blue and Green Pumpkin followed by PB&J (peanut butter and jelly).

Now to answer my first question I would have to go with the green pumpkin as I have more confidence in this colour than in black, also in my side of the world green pumpkin also gets you way more bites than black. I happened to have quite a few of the Molix Tenax Jigs in green pumpkin and as it so happens they also had 4 amber strands (this is just a matter of built up confidence from what I have heard) so my mind was made up on colour preference. First step : check

Second Step, what kind or style of fishing suits me best. i.e rock and shoal or timber and vegetation. I personally prefer the latter as I LOVE fishing timber especially on our waters, Klipkoppie, Witklip Primkop, Injaka etc, the list goes on, this is without all the farm dams I often fish, they have hundreds of stumps, laydowns and overhanging bush, typical FLW and Bassmaster style with close quarters battles just waiting to happen. This after all is what got me into Jig fishing so the football style head got second place, especially considering the amount of grass and weed we have in our dams, the nature of the football style jig eye in relation to the head would just not cut it and I would be too busy getting rid of grass covering my jig and not getting the required amounts of time to fish it. I just love the idea of watching pro's get lunker fish mere meters from the boat in the thickest nastiest stuff that any sane person would never even think of putting a lure into. So first choice was a heavy cover and penetrating Jig for my personal style. Second Step : check

Third Step, what depth do I fish and how heavy is the cover in relation to the jig I should present, now I don't have alot of confidence in a jig so my first step I would have wanted is a 1/4 or 1/8oz as I believe that when fishing something new rather downsize as the frequency of bites is normally higher. BUT...here comes the big BUT...A light jig would just not cover my application with regards to the kind of structure I would like to penetrate and fish. Also with my lack of deep water fishing skills I wanted something I could use for both the above mentioned applications. So I rather opted for a 1/2oz jig. Not to big but big enough to make it do what I wanted it to do in the thick nasty stuff, as well as in the deep more open water. Third Step : check

Fourth Step, one of the most important attributes of a jig sits in the trailer (soos voet en plakkie of pap en shiba, een werk nie sonder die ander nie). Now do I want to immitate baitfish (nah got more than enough lures that get this job done) or a crab or freshwater crustation (now we are talking, I have seen some crabs this side that I would like to use for helping me snip braid). Now remember I don't have confidence in jigs so I don't want to stick a trailer on it that is going to make the bait look too bulky. I want to make it look compact, so I dug in my tackle box to try find a suitable trailer, now the general rule is that you want your trailer to match your jig i.e now looking for a green pumpkin trailer to match my jig but at the same time I don't want something bulky like a brush hog or a full sized creature trailer. Luckily I found a spare jig trailer (batwing styled) that I got with a berkley jig I purchsed many moons ago so on it went.

My first outing to a local farm pond with my new arsenal saw me reaching instinctively for the lighter 1/8oz football Gary Klein Finnesse jig made spro in brown and black, luckily my logic got hold of me realizing the sheer amount of duckweed and watergrass found in this specific dam. So rather I picked my 1/2oz model although this was not my initial first choice as this was very bulky and going against all of my lack of confidence in jig logic. The boat was barely in the water for 5minutes, Leo starting to tie on a lure and me sitting with the idea of throwing this big unidentified pitching object when I made my first half hearted pitch, about 4m away from the boat to a bunch of lilly pads forming a little point (now in my mind I am still trying to figure out what the bite would feel like should a fish take against all of this dams finicky fish odds). My jig barely came to a halt on the bottem before I had the distinctive thud thud thud like a steriod worm bite rigged texas style, set the hook and got my very first keeper for the day. Leo frowning on this as this is mostly a green pumpkin weightless fluke dam (that normally has you easliy go through a packet of flukes in about 3 or so hours, boating 30+ bass ranging from 400g to 2.3kg) so he gracefully carries on tying his fluke. The rest of the day saw him land one fish on fluke, within the first hour I have already boated 10+ keeper sized fish. To such an extent that he tied on my other jig that I had made ready for the occasion and soon he was also into fish. Unfortunately from all the bites close to the end of the day my trailer was scarred for life with me fixing it with a lighter where ever I could trying to save it for as many bites sas possible.

We got off the water and problem...eish no more trailer. Got back to the shop and was now faced with the fear of not being able to replicate my new found glory trailer. The next step was to use something I had confidence in thus resorting to the old faithfull Zoom Z-Hog in green pumpkin which I minipulated by cutting away and slimming most of the body and making it shorter to suite my style of jig fishing as well as to keep the bait profile compact. The next few sessions out still saw me catching the same amount of fish. This from now on is my preferred jig trailer till such a time that my confidence will allow me to do otherwise. Fourth Step : check

Now we are are getting to the real meat and potatoes of jig fishing, your Rod and Reel Kit. I used a Quantum Smoke Reel with high speed retrieve (to be able to reel in slack line in time) and my 7" MH Carrot Stix Wild Green with a fast tip and 3/8oz - 1oz rating. I used 15lb P-Line 100% fluoro and this really handled the application like a dream. I believe the P-line is a really good value for money fluoro with very low memory ( I HATE LINE MEMORY ). I then rigged Jigs on the following setups to get a proper feel for the application : Quantum Smoke high speed reel (the reason I use smoke reels is that it's the only reel that I have ever fished that I could actually also feel the amplified vibration of the bite right into my reel through a good quality rod) on a duckett 7'6" XH and the same smoke reel on a quantum Exo 7'4" H. I must admit I prefer the balance of the EXO above mentioned for the application as it slots nicely in the middle of the 7' Carrot and the extreme 7'6" Duckett. The only thing I changed was the line, I first went to mono with the frightful idea of me snapping off on the bite using the heavier rods on the 15lb p-line (belive me fluoro sounds like a gun shot when it snaps). I still felt all the bites and the stretch was a bit forgiving, much more so than with the fluoro hence my fear of snapping at the knot. The only lacking aspect was when making really really long casts the strikes were too mushy with the stretch even though I was using 17lb mono. I then proceeded to move to a copolymor line as I thought with the added UV layer that stretch would be a little less. This was true and it coped very well but the downside was line memory. I have yet to find a copolymor with the same low amount of memory of a high quality mono or fluoro. Personally I am not a big fan of braid for any application (this is just my peronsal preference). I just simply break it to easily no matter if I even up to 60lb test, it just hasn't got the same abbrassive resistant qualities that a good quality mono or fluoro has. And pesonally I also hate tying leaders and have absolutely no faith in tying braid directly to my lure. I am one of those finicky fisherman that believe fish can see the line, I have seen to many times how much higher my rate of bite is than my friends on the same day using direct braid knots. Sure I do believe that braid is the ultra in sensitivity and it cuts very nicely through vegetation but at the same time it is costly and frays much to easily for my personal liking. No matter what ambilical cord (line) I used I have still managed to feel all my bites (that I know of anyway ) and I feel that this is all down to personal preference. In some applications certain lines outshine in various situations but for now I use a good quality fluoro in the 15lb range (I have never had a snap by strike)for most applications and a very high poundage mono in the really thick and nasty stuff. My sensation on my jigs have become a tad better using the broomsticks but I believe a good quality solid 7' MH and descent reel will get the job done most of the time. (if you don't fish 1oz jigs)

Meat and Potatoes of jig fishing : check

And the most important thing I can ever tell you from personal experience is to please NEVER apply the principle that "strikes are free" and if you think it's a fish strike...you lose more jigs and sit with a dented ego more than anything else as you will be striking more than you will be fishing. Remember jigs are made to fish the nastiest stuff and they are designed to make contact with everything...if I had to strike everytime something caused tension on my line I would be out of breath 3 casts into my fishing day and a jackass infront of everyone watching. It is however crucial to watch your line carefully especially on the fall and to be very observant at all times as to what your line, lure and rod are doing. But 9 times out of 10 you will feel that destinctive bite. When in doubt DON"T set the hook, rather just load up on your rod slightly with a bit of tention to a certain point and keep steady pressure. Wait for the fish to make a move...you will either at the worst of times notice your line moving to the side, feel the action of his tail swimming and moving or, here is the best part of all...even though I am still finding my feet with jig fishing and a jig fishing novice, almost all of the time from personal experience, when a bass has really committed to your jig and you keep that constant pressure when you are not sure whether it's a bite or not, you will eventually feel him chomping down on it AGAIN while he holds on as he is getting ready to crush it with those crushers in the back of his throat, and thats when you know to set the hook.

I hope this has made some sense to you from a beginner jig fisherman to another...enjoy it, it's the single most awesome kind of fishing to me personally and even rivals the rush of top water fishing.....

[Grizzn N Bassin]

Nice write up man

[newbie74]

My reading on this whole situation is right jig for right application. Not only is weight an issue to contend with but type of jig.

 

I starting fishing football heads in timber! Big mistake on my behalf. Now i have deep cover pitching jigs for timber, football heads for rocks, grass jigs for grass (no brainer there) and swimming jigs for any time a spinnerbait would work.

 

If i throw the wrong jig for the wrong application then i find that the design of the jig hinders rather than helps. i.e. getting a slimline grass jig stuck in the crevises while fishing rocks or getting a football head fouled up all of the time.

 

Just my take on it but i am also still a beginner to jigs!!!!

[martintheduck]

Good read.

[aqualkinbush]

I'm learning to fish plastics atm, I suck with them, but jigs are next on my list and this I think has given me a good head start on that. Thanks!

[gripnrip]

Careful with the "tap tap tap" phrase. Some guys on here swear that is a blue gill and not a bass. (I typed that while rolling my eyes)

[newbie74]

Regarding trailers. I know for a fact that Excite make a floating trailer that is purpose made for jigs. The `raptor tail chunk` i think it is called. Emjay, i know Brent sells them at BWG.

 

Other than that i find any creature bait can be adapted to work as a great trailer. Take the back inch off of a brush hog (if you dont want the bulk) or just fish a full size creature bait on the hook keeper for a slower rate of fall.

 

I agree 100% that the jig fishing bug gets you when you have success with it.