Mastering Jigs: The Six Must-Have Jig Types for Bass Fishing

Jigs have been around in bass fishing for decades, and there's a good reason why. They flat-out work. They catch bass. I know, they look a little weird, and they can get a little used to throwing them because it doesn't look initially something that you would see in the water. But don't be reluctant to throw them, guys. They really work well. And if you're going to really get more into bass fishing, you're going to realize not one style of jig actually works for everything. What you need is a good selection of different types of jigs for all the different situations that you will encounter. Now, there's a ton of them out there, and there's a lot of specialized ones out there. But today I'm going to talk about the six types of jigs, the most popular ones that every bass angler should use.

Starting with casting jigs. Casting jigs, these are, like, your jack-of-all-trade, Leatherman kind of jigs. The Arkie-style jig, right? The Arkie head, that's the most predominant type in this category. You can use these for a whole variety of stuff. You can pitch it around docks, around laydowns, around scattered boulders. You can throw it into deeper water and drag it on the bottom along ledges and drop-offs and around points. It's quite the universal jig. And you can actually skip these under docks, too. Because of the somewhat flat design on the head, you can use them for skipping, too. So they can be used for a whole variety of purposes.

They primarily imitate crawfish. So the colors you want to pick are crawdad imitators, such as your brown hues, your green hues, and then, of course, you've got to have the black and blue combination. That's just universal. I know that's weird. When I looked at black and blue at first, I was like, "There is nothing in my lake that looks black and blue. I'm not going to throw this." It took me a couple of decades, actually, to start throwing black and blue. When I did, boy, howdy, I've learned quickly the bass really like it. So make sure you have that, some green hues and some brown hues, and be good to go.

The next type of jig is football jigs. They're called a football jig because the shape of the head resembles a football. Pretty simple. Now, why would you use this? Well, the thing about football jigs, they have a couple of advantages over other types. First of all, you have that wider base, and it has more contact with the bottom that way. So you get a better feel for what's going on at the bottom. If you're kind of reading between the lines, this is the type of bait you use to crawl along the bottom. That's why you want a football jig. You can sense the difference between gravel and pebbles, and pebbles and soft bottom, or hard, like a slate or a rocky bottom. You can tell that, little twigs and stuff. You can feel that a lot better, especially with a tungsten. But a football head jig gives you a little bit better sensitivity.

Plus, with the way the eye is located for the line tie, what you do is you pull it through the water, it does two things. It tilts it up a little bit, especially as you're going over stuff. It'll make it bounce up and rock a little bit up, which brings the trailers up a little bit. You can put little craw trailers on the back of it. A craw trailer is best with this jig. The other thing it does is, as it goes through the water, it wobbles a little bit on that football head jig, so it looks like a crawdad bumbling its way across the bottom. That's what you're trying to imitate here. So, that combined with the trailer, craw trailer or twin tail grub, is going to look like a crawdad. So pick your colors in the green hues and the brown hues to best imitate the forage in your leg.

The next category of jigs is the flipping jig. Now, this is for hand-to-hand combat fishing. It's one of my favorites. This is, like, you're taking your jig, you're flipping it and pitching it into a heavy cover, flooded bushes, flooded timber, thick weeds, that kind of stuff. When a bass hits it, you're going to have to wrench them out of that cover to get them to you. Otherwise, they can wrap themselves up and get free. So you need a stout hook. These typically come with a 5/0, very strong, strong hook. And they're designed to be used with 40- to 50-pound braid, with a heavy power, heavy action rod. Stout equipment, so it needs to be able to handle that.

In addition, the head needs to be able to get through the cover and not get hung up in it. So if you notice the line tie, these are the ones I like to use. They're from Siebert Jigs. But you notice the line tie is actually part of the head. It doesn't stick out or it's attached onto the head. This way, it gets hung up a lot less, it doesn't collect any weeds, and it gets through the cover a lot easier, right where the bass are at. So a flipping-style jig is going to help you get those bass when they're buried in deep.

The next style of jig is the finesse jig. This is typified by having a round ball head jig with an eyelet on the top. And the strands are typically shorter. It's a smaller compact bait. This works really well for smallmouth and spotted bass and also when the bass bite is off. When it's colder water, for example, or a front has come through and shut the bite down, these smaller compact lures do really well. Also, the round ball head does a really good job in rocky areas, typically where bass hang out. If you're fishing a rocky bank or you're fishing riprap or something like that, round ball head jigs tend to come out of those easy. They don't get hung up as much, but with the eye on the top, they pop out a little bit easier too. So you don't lose as many jigs that way.

Typically, you're using this to imitate a small crawdad. So you use a small crawdad trailer on it. You're using, again, your browns and your dark green colors. You can use a little bit of extra color in there for some flash, nothing wrong with that, and they work really well for those conditions. One of the tips, guys, here's the thing, you can use this for pitching too. A lot of guys don't. But keep in mind, if the bite is off a little bit, you can pitch into a lighter cover, and you can still get the jig out of there, and you can catch a lot of bass that way when they're keen on smaller forage. So it's another use for this. Typically, I'm getting these in the quarter-ounce and three-eighth-ounce size. I'm not going any bigger than that. If I want to go higher than that, then I use a different jig. But a quarter- to three-eighth-ounce is great. Eighth-ounce is even a good size to start with.

Now, I'd be remiss if I didn't include swim jigs. Swim jigs are an interesting category of jigs because you're not really flipping and pitching and dragging these. You're actually casting out and winding them back like you would a lure. Now, technically, you can swim any kind of jig. Cool. Not a problem. There's no law against it. But a swim jig is designed specifically for this presentation for a couple of reasons. One, note that the line tie is in the front. This allows it to be pulled through the water better than if you have the line tie at the top, it'll come through at an angle. So you want it in the front. The shape of the head is designed to come through weeds a lot easier, and it also enables the lure to kind of wobble side to side as it goes through the water. So it resembles a baitfish swimming through the water. For that reason, the trailers you want on it are going to be shad-type or baitfish-type trailers that has little flippers on the end of it.

A key thing with that, guys, is that, instead of mounting or attaching the trailer on horizontally, like we do most all the other jigs, here, you want to do it vertically. The reason why is when you bring it through the water, those little flappers swim like this, and it looks like a little baitfish swimming. It looks like the tail fin of a baitfish. So do it that way and you'll catch a lot more fish. Weight sizes, three-eighth-ounce to a half-ounce, and you want to stick with baitfish colors now, not crawdad colors. So your silvers, your whites, things with chartreuse in it to resemble perch or bluegill, those are the types of colors that you want for this.

Now, the last category is hair jigs, somewhat specialized, but you got to have them, guys. Hair jigs, they're typically made with synthetic or marabou hair, not your typical silicone skirt material. And that gives it a little bit different look and feel and presentation. When it's sitting on the very bottom, the hair just kind of moves and makes it look alive. And when you're swimming it through the water, it undulates and makes movement so it looks, again, alive.

There's a couple of different ways to use this. It's typically been known to use in colder waters, in particular, for smallies. You can crawl along the bottom. Get, like, a green pumpkin color or a brown color and crawl along the bottom like a small crawdad or a sculpin or a goby is kind of what you're trying to imitate here. And that works very well. It's quite effective in the wintertime to do that. But also, you can swim it back, and what I mean by that is you cast it out and just a slow, steady retrieve about mid-depth. And you'd be surprised how many bass hit that. Even largemouth will hit it that way. And through the warmer months, you can do it that way.

This is the thing, a lot of guys don't know this and won't throw it. They take a hair jig, they do it in the wintertime, basically late fall to early spring, and then they put it away for the summertime and in spring. They don't fish it. Wrong. Cast it out, let it get to about mid-depth, and then slowly reel it back at a steady pace. You'd be shocked. It actually really does work. So it's kind of a hover-stroll type technique. But that works really well with hair jigs.

And those weights, they can be really small, like a 1/16-ounce, right, a 1/8-ounce hair jig all the way up to 1/2-ounce to a 3/4-ounce, like a white hair jig. Use these in deeper waters when you're trying to imitate dying shad in the fall. Works very effective. There's another tip. You can use it quite effectively then. But just get a wider range. I would go with, say, eighth-ounce to three-eighth as your starter pack, in browns, greens, blacks. This is where black really does come in, and it is a factor. Black hair jigs work really well. And then, of course, your baitfish colors when you're going to swim it back.

So with all those jigs, you're going to be able to catch a lot more bass this year. Hope that helps. For more tips and tricks like this, visit bassresource.com.