Building Confidence in Fishing Jigs

WIGuide · June 9, 2016

I've been fishing since I was roughly knee high to a grasshopper. I bought my own boat the summer between 5th and 6th grade and never looked back. Despite all that fishing experience, one bait I've never had much confidence in is a jig (with the exception of a swim jig). I'm not sure why, since I know how deadly they can be, but I haven't had much luck with them and have felt that I can outfish them with a texas rig. Last fall I had finally decided to toss them around a little bit since you always hear how effective they can be in cold water. After catching a few fish on them and loosing a monster, I decided to continue practicing with them to gain some confidence and knowledge with them. I've been doing some here and there this year, but earlier this week I set out to kick it into high gear. We have gotten quit a bit of rain lately, and I know that they stack up pretty good on a few spots of a local lake when the water is high so I headed over there after work excited to see what I could do. Pulling up to the landing, my excitement quickly died. The water wasn't up just a little, it was up a good 3 feet, which I know to you southern guys is nothing, but up here on our natural lakes 3' is highly abnormal. From high water in the spring into the drought of summer the water may fluctuate a foot to maybe 2 total so to go up 3 over already high water left half the parking lot under water. Despite my best efforts I couldn't get my boat off the trailer there.

This last one really shows how far I was from getting to the landing itself.

Anyway, I packed things up and headed to the next lake over which was only a few miles down the road. This one was up a little but not anywhere near like the first one. Once I pulled up on my first spot, it didn't even take 5 minutes before I connected on the jig. I was a bit surprised when I pulled up a dinky walleye. Not that it's super surprising to catch one on a bass jig, but it only came out of a few feet of water with a lot of grass. It wasn't too much after though I connected on a few largemouth. I was trying to fish it in the sparser areas of the grass flat, and then swim it over the thicker stuff which paid off. While I was still up shallow, I just couldn't help myself. I had to sling a frog around a bit. I missed a fish right off the bat, and threw the jig back and caught it. I'm glad I pulled the frog out though as it netted me the biggest bass of the night, a 17 1/4" that I know I wouldn't have caught on the jig simply because I wouldn't have thrown it where I threw the frog. Man did she annihilate it! The skies started to clear off as the front started to move through so I slid out to fish the outer weed line and pick off a few more fish on the jig. I'm slowly starting to get a hang of this jig deal. Definitely not an expert, but I've got a lot more confidence in it than I used to. I fished for about 3 hours, and boated 9 largemouth, a walleye and a decent northern.