Hair Jigs

[papajoe222]

Who Uses Them? Obviously, I do.

What size (weight) most often used?  It varies between 3/16oz and 1/8oz. but I've used up to 3/8oz.

Do you pour/tie your own? I tie my own.

Most productive color? White/brown stripes and black/white

What other species have you caught on them? Crappie, walleye, sauger rock bass, white bass, trout, bowfin and northern pike.

Do you add any type of trailer?  I've added everything from minnows (awesome for small mouth ) and crawlers (walleye), to curly tail grubs, drop shot worms and tubes. Most often, though, the plain hair jig doesn't need a trailer to produce.

Most productive retrieve? Jigging and dragging bottom.

[Jig Man]

I tie my own.  I make a lot of different colors.  I mix crystal flash in most of mine.  I don’t use trailers.  I use light weight most of the time as I swim twitch them in shallow water.  My best all time day time is a blue and white with red chennile.  My best night color is navy blue and orange.

[Black Hawk Basser]

I tie some for myself.  I like a 1/8 oz bunny leech type in all black or an orange craw pattern.

[frogflogger]

Been tying them for 60+ yrs. Use all sizes and catch most anything that swims in fresh or salt water.

Glad to see them getting some respect. They move in and out of popularity through the years but their effectiveness never ceases.

[ATA]

12 hours ago, papajoe222 said:

I've added everything from minnows (awesome for small mouth )

that would be nice to share some pictures samples.

[Steveo-1969]

I just caught my first fish (actually 2) on a hair jig last week. Walleyes out of a river on an 1/8 ounce chartreuse hair jig with no trailer. I've got a lot to learn with this lure but I have a little more confidence with it than I did before.

[Finessegenics]

I have had limited success. I think I’m using far too heavy ones (1/4 oz and 3/8 oz) and I usually just jig them off the bottom. This season I’ll be doing the 1/16 route and just swim them. I think that method is far more popular too. 
 

I know some people who tie their own and they like to add leech trailers. They usually just tie them with a lot less hair than you would see in store bought ones and tip the hook with a gulp leech. Supposedly works great for walleye jigging and I don’t see why it wouldn’t work for bass either.  

[WRB]

My 1st bass jig was a Doll Fly black with red bucktail hair 3/8 oz. We sold them at the boat landing tackle shed, they display was a cardboard card with the jigs stapled onto it suck in the 50's.

Hair jgs were the 1st jigs availble on the commercial market followed by the vinyl skirt bass jigs in the 60's-70's, living rubber and silicone skirts in the 80's to the current time period. 

I never stopped using bucktail hair jigs and use all the other types. The term pig & jig originally refers to a hair jig with pork rind trailer. When you said pig & jig everyone in the 70's knew what it was, back then it was a commonly used bass lure.

71' I made my first jig mold, a modified football head that I call a standup viper shape head that keeps the hook from rolling over and upright off the bottom that weighs 7/16 oz with 5/0 hook. Over the years I have caught thousand of bass on this jig including my top 5 listed.

Originally I tied my own hair jigs then found people who tie hair jigs better then I can. For me a combination of black, redish brown and purple works best year around. The color combinations of dark and redish brown with greens in the spawn cycle and Shad colors with white, green and black during the summer and fall are my go to colors.

I always use a trailer with mt bass hair jigs, usually pork rind the old pug & jig.

The bottom line is hair is another jig skirt material not just a small 1/8 ball head jig that the majority of anglers think of.

Tom 

 

[Kdizzle]

I tie my own hair and marabou.  Its a fairly cheap hobby if you buy lots of cheap unpainted jig heads and paint them yourself like I do(I don't think its really cost effective to pour your own lead).  The materials I use are easily available for cheap on Amazon, and I live about ten miles from a blue ribbon trout fishery so there are like 10 fly shops, with all the materials I need, within a 10 mile drive. 

 

1/8th ounce jigs, black marabou, and a bit of flash gets bit all year.  If you like spending a little more money than Keitech Tungsten ball heads are perfect for it.

[garroyo130]

I currently don't but after hearing how effective they are fished weightless on drop shots i think ill be tying some up soon.

[OkobojiEagle]

40 minutes ago, garroyo130 said:

I currently don't but after hearing how effective they are fished weightless on drop shots i think ill be tying some up soon.

I had better results with my drop shot hare pattern when I weighted the hook shaft with two suspend strips.

 

oe