A Few Winter Thoughts.

Gettin Jiggy With It:

Fishing has been a little slow this past week and so i've taken to cleaning and organizing my gear. I'm sure everyone has experienced how out of sorts tackle bags and boxes can become over time, especially with nearly daily use. And I'll be totally honest, more often than not, if a rod needs the reel cleaned or if the braided line gets one or two of those annoying little knots in it, i tend to just put those rods down and pick up the next one that's rigged the way i want. It speeds things up and improves my experience on the water. But eventually i have to deal with the mess i've made. Thats where i find myself now. I've never been surprised by the state of my tackle, when you fish as much as i do, and when you often try to rush fishing to fit it in between daily responsibilities, things can get messy fast. While cleaning this winter though one thing has stood out to me more than anything else.

I've fallen in love with jigging. And more specifically, with jig heads and soft plastics. I'm actually a little surprised with how many jig heads i've found laying around lately. Jig heads in jacket pockets, in pant pockets, in with wood working tools, in the bathroom, all over the jeep. Everywhere. Its obvious that i just love them, And it's for two major reasons, usability and effectiveness.

Jigs heads have to be one of the most useful pieces of terminal tackle, they come in every conceivable shape, size and color and there are millions of different plastic baits that can be attached to them (or use live bait if you wish). You can retrieve them fast or slow, stroke them, walk them, vertical jig them, fish them weedless or with a spinner and so on… It would take me forever to cover everything you can do with them. And really, that is beyond the scope of this blog. I'm going to try and keep things a bit more concise while i quickly go over a couple of the things that first come to mind when i think about jigging.

Selection of various jig heads.

Trout magnet jig.

Returning to my previous mention about vertical jigging. It's a simple and effective technique that works just as well for Crappie off a shallow dock as it does for Rainbows out of a boat. And there is a great trick for vertical jigging from a distance that i just love, where you fish your jig under a weighted slip bobber. It allows you to extend your reach, while still maintaining a vertical motion. it's a really useful presentation if you're shore fishing, or If you find yourself stuck on a dock. For instance, say there is a mess of lily pads or underwater cover like stumps within casting distance. While it absolutely works to cast toward these targets and retrieve, sometimes i find the fish want a little more time to investigate the lure or bait before striking, as you jig up and down next to that weedline or over that stump you are giving the more lethargic or nervous fish the time they need to make up their minds. Also, you potentially expose your lure to more of the fish held up in that cover than you would with a simple cast and retrieve. This also works great out of a boat if you don't want to risk spooking the fish you're targeting.

Variation of a slip bobber
vertical jigging rig.

Another simple but fantastic aspect of fishing a jig is their castability. I'm not sure if everyone finds this to be true or not but i've noticed that having the majority of my terminal tackle weight at the very tip of my line improves not only casting distance but also accuracy. I fish weedlines and covered banks a lot and anything extra i can do to avoid snags is a blessing. And i'm sure that's something all anglers can appreciate.

When it comes to the effectiveness of jigging i have no doubt. You can consistently catch everything from salmon and trout to Largemouth bass and smaller sunfish, i've even seen Teresa catch catfish with them, which was unexpected and pretty cool. As i said before, by utilizing different jig heads and soft plastic baits you can create any number of combinations, all with unique appearances and behaviours, perfect for a multitude of conditions and species. As for favorite combinations, that depends totally on what i'm targeting. For trout, and sunfish like bluegill and crappie smaller is usually better, i actually love the Trout Magnet line of jig heads, they pair extremely well with any small plastic bait (1 inch grubs are wonderful.) but i've had a lot of success with the baits that are often included with them, although when targeting sunfish i'll tend to shorten the bait by cutting the body almost in half, i find i get a much better hookup rate than with the longer bait... as for Largemouth bass a dependable combination for me has been a larger jig head in a neutral color like black paired with a 4, 5, or 6 inch curly tail worm or grub. I like to use dark green or dark red plastics for this but that's not a hard and fast rule as i've used many other colors with success. On a bit of a side note, and to further illustrate the versatility of these sort of combinations, each of the five Coho i hooked this past season were caught on a medium sized fluorescent green/yellow jig head paired with a 2 inch curly tail grub in an opaque grey. And they absolutely smashed it. It's a color scheme i wouldn't normally use for salmonids and i wasn't really expecting it to work, but it's a combination i will definitely use again.

There really is a ton of room for experimentation when it comes to jigging and that gets me so excited, it's such a rewarding feeling when you can be creative and adapt to things like weather and feeding habits easily while you're on the water. If that helps you connect with more fish that's wonderful, that's the whole point. But if you do get skunked you can at least walk away knowing that you covered all your bases, and that always makes things a bit less frustrating. If you haven't had a lot of experience with them in the past i encourage you to give them a shot this year. I'm positive you won't be disappointed.