Fish Rejecting Jig Question

[Catt]

1 hour ago, slonezp said:

Denny Brauer hasn't been relevant in years.

 

Pretty sure he can still put bass in the boat!

 

Denny moved Lake Amistad & stays active fishing the famous lake & still competes in regional tournaments.

[Tatsu Dave]

Denny has forgot more than I'll ever know. I always liked his style.

[Sam]

10 hours ago, WRB said:

Between 1967 to 1973 I fish for FLMB in the San Diego lakes joining the Pisces bass club in 1969.

The FLMB we different then Northern LMB and difficult to catch on traditional bass lures. I learned to use live bait like crawdads nose hooked weightless. Free lining a nose hooked crawdad was every effective. You know when a bass is near the live crawdad because it starts kicking to get way just before the bass engulfs it. When a bass strikes a crawdad it doesn’t reject it, just moves off with it and a easy hook set.

Bass know the difference between a jig and a live crawdad.

Does Bass always reject a jig...no sometimes they eat it and move off with it or just sit there and continue crunching it, we catch those bass nearly every time. My educated guess is about 50% of the initial jig strikes we miss completely. Much higher rejection rate then soft plastic worms that in time bass will swallow it’s so life like to them.

Tom

Tom, I remember when I was growing up in south Louisiana the live shrimp on our unweighted line jumping out of the water near our bobber when a redfish or speckled trout was close to it.

 

When this happened we waited for the cork to take off, which it always did, and we had a nice fish on the line.

 

Interesting that a freshwater fish would do the same as a saltwater fish.

 

Thanks for the info.

[Dirtyeggroll]

Fish will often inhale and reject something to help remove any debris engulfed with the initial strike.

[Mobasser]

Catching bass consistently on jigs has been my hardest challenge in 40 yrs of fishing. It's hard, and the jig bite is inconsistent from day to day. I still miss fish on jigs, far fewer on t rig plastic worms.                                    It seems like every week we have a thread about strike detection with jigs. Im convinced that if someone tells you they never miss fish on jigs, they probably don't even know they're getting strikes to begin with. They're missing fish, but don't even realize it.

[Catt]

@Mobasser Once I quit trying to separate a jig bite from a Texas Rig bite everything changed.

 

With both I'm feeling for the same subtleties.

[T-Billy]

7 hours ago, Tatsu Dave said:

Denny has forgot more than I'll ever know. I always liked his style.

Me too. Brick mason who decided to lay down his trowel, move south, and chase his dream. Seems to have worked out pretty well for him.

[T-Billy]

5 hours ago, Catt said:

@Mobasser Once I quit trying to separate a jig bite from a Texas Rig bite everything changed.

 

With both I'm feeling for the same subtleties.

Roger that!!! Sometimes it's REAL subtle. Last night I caught 9 LM on a T rigged beaver. I felt ONE tick. The other 10 bites (lost two) just got... weird. Not heavy, not chomping on it, just... not right. There was a fish there every time I swung. I think they were just softly picking it up and sitting there facing me? Dunno. I do know it takes time and experience to gain a feel for these light bites. There's no substitute for time on the water. Braid and a quality stick ain't bad things to have either.

[Deleted account]

On 9/4/2021 at 8:39 AM, Mobasser said:

Catching bass consistently on jigs has been my hardest challenge in 40 yrs of fishing. It's hard, and the jig bite is inconsistent from day to day. I still miss fish on jigs, far fewer on t rig plastic worms.                                    It seems like every week we have a thread about strike detection with jigs. Im convinced that if someone tells you they never miss fish on jigs, they probably don't even know they're getting strikes to begin with. They're missing fish, but don't even realize it.

Nope, fishing as a whole is relatively easy, as far as bite detection goes, and specifically to jigs, all the secondary indications of a bite are a backup to feeling the bite, which is usually a subtle tick or tap. Line movement, something feeling different in it's many forms, or anything else that may indicate a bite has already occurred, while certainly are useful and will result in more fish, are in no way an indication that the initial bite wasn't missed. One needs to work on both in order to maximize hooked fish.

[FishTank]

The best advice I ever got on fishing a jig was that most jig bites don't feel like bites (strikes) at all.  It's when you feel something different than the bottom, the line getting heavy or something besides structure that the fish has actually just picked it up but not eaten it.  This is when you set the hook.  You may swing and miss a lot but eventually that odd feeling is a fish.  

 

A good example of this and this is one my favorite things to do when jig fishing, is to toss a jig onto a down tree trunk and just drop it off to one side or drag it down the middle till it drops.  Usually when it bounces off of this structure the fish hit it and the jig just feels suddenly light  It doesn't really feel like a strike at all but more like the fish it just holding it for a split second.