Jigs have always been a powerful bass catching tool. My buddy in Georgia used to slay big bass with them all the time. I have always been more of a crankbait, topwater, froggin' king of guy, but when you see or hear so many people having success with a jig, it makes you want to give it another shot. I just can't seem to wrap my gourd around fishing a jig. Probably because most of the bodies of water I have fished have a thick layer of weeds on the bottom. How do you fish a jig in those situations, or do you even try?? I have always had jigs, even a variety of jigs in my tacklebox, but I couldn't tell you how many times I have actually pulled one out and fished one.
School me, show me the error of my ways......
I understand the flipping part, that is pretty easy to comprehend. Softly flip the jig out and let it fall, jiggle it a few times and try again....I get that, but casting a jig and then letting it sink, and then hopping it or dragging it back makes me think of dredging every kind of weed back to the boat....
Help me out.... I want to learn.
School me, show me the error of my ways......
I understand the flipping part, that is pretty easy to comprehend. Softly flip the jig out and let it fall, jiggle it a few times and try again....I get that, but casting a jig and then letting it sink, and then hopping it or dragging it back makes me think of dredging every kind of weed back to the boat....
Help me out.... I want to learn.
Try visiting bodies of water with scant vegetation, steep rocky dropoffs, use a boat to get out into the middle of the water, learn the terrain, and use live bait.
Spot Pond in Stoneham is perfect for jigs -- the bottom is all rock, gravel, or sand, with very little vegetation, except for one small cove that's difficult to reach in the southwestern corner. There are steep rocky dropoffs all over, like huge boulders and rocky islands, all over the place. You can flip or cast with confidence. Really any distance will work. Shore access is abundant, and if you want to shell out the $40 or so to rent a boat there you can get to all sorts of different spots -- islands, deep open water -- and you can try your luck trolling there.
One problem with Spot Pond is that the population density is a bit low there, so it can seem "dead" at times, but once you've found the bass, your jigs will work.
Many man-made reservoirs tend to have similar bottoms as Spot -- rock, gravel, and sand, with scant vegetation. The kettle holes and spring-fed ponds and lakes hold the kind of weeds that frustrate jig lovers, especially in summer.
When casting in water that does have vegetation, try to figure out the terrain of the water and how that relates to the sink speed of your jig. Cast out, let the jig drop for 4 seconds, and reel in quickly. Did you snag any weeds? No? Then the "bottom" (in terms of weeds) is deeper. Now try 6 seconds. Or try 2 seconds. Try different spots. If you're snagging weeds at every depth, then you can't cast a jig in this spot or in this body of water. This is a great way to spend the hours around the middle of the afternoon, when the bite is slow and you have time to kill before dusk. If you're reeling in quickly and fan-casting multiple spots, you can figure out a lot of terrain, and at dusk or in the early morning you'll be able to hit the depths you want without snags.
Of course you could also try a weedless jig -- those don't always work, but will snag less than a regular jig.
Jigs are also great for combining with live bait. Spot Pond in Stoneham has loads of crawfish for example -- if you can catch them (with a homemade trap or cheap trap from Amazon) you can cast them out over extreme distances on the end of a jig, farther than anything else you can reach from shore, IMO, if it is a decent sized jig. Big bass keeping cool in summer, in the deeper pockets of water, tend not to get too much easy prey down there (crawfish and baitfish are concentrated in the shallower water). If you offer them an easy, isolated target on the lake floor, and it's the right time of day, you might have to reel in a lunker from 40 yards away -- a real treat.
I hope you find some of that helpful, and don't forget that BIG BASS love jigs. The slower days will be worth the lunkers.
Spot Pond in Stoneham is perfect for jigs -- the bottom is all rock, gravel, or sand, with very little vegetation, except for one small cove that's difficult to reach in the southwestern corner. There are steep rocky dropoffs all over, like huge boulders and rocky islands, all over the place. You can flip or cast with confidence. Really any distance will work. Shore access is abundant, and if you want to shell out the $40 or so to rent a boat there you can get to all sorts of different spots -- islands, deep open water -- and you can try your luck trolling there.
One problem with Spot Pond is that the population density is a bit low there, so it can seem "dead" at times, but once you've found the bass, your jigs will work.
Many man-made reservoirs tend to have similar bottoms as Spot -- rock, gravel, and sand, with scant vegetation. The kettle holes and spring-fed ponds and lakes hold the kind of weeds that frustrate jig lovers, especially in summer.
When casting in water that does have vegetation, try to figure out the terrain of the water and how that relates to the sink speed of your jig. Cast out, let the jig drop for 4 seconds, and reel in quickly. Did you snag any weeds? No? Then the "bottom" (in terms of weeds) is deeper. Now try 6 seconds. Or try 2 seconds. Try different spots. If you're snagging weeds at every depth, then you can't cast a jig in this spot or in this body of water. This is a great way to spend the hours around the middle of the afternoon, when the bite is slow and you have time to kill before dusk. If you're reeling in quickly and fan-casting multiple spots, you can figure out a lot of terrain, and at dusk or in the early morning you'll be able to hit the depths you want without snags.
Of course you could also try a weedless jig -- those don't always work, but will snag less than a regular jig.
Jigs are also great for combining with live bait. Spot Pond in Stoneham has loads of crawfish for example -- if you can catch them (with a homemade trap or cheap trap from Amazon) you can cast them out over extreme distances on the end of a jig, farther than anything else you can reach from shore, IMO, if it is a decent sized jig. Big bass keeping cool in summer, in the deeper pockets of water, tend not to get too much easy prey down there (crawfish and baitfish are concentrated in the shallower water). If you offer them an easy, isolated target on the lake floor, and it's the right time of day, you might have to reel in a lunker from 40 yards away -- a real treat.
I hope you find some of that helpful, and don't forget that BIG BASS love jigs. The slower days will be worth the lunkers.
You just need to use the application the body of water dictates. For a muck and weed filled bottom casting and football jigs just are not effective, and your not missing much because no one else is using them either. Your best bet is to either identify a place in your like with a hard bottom or head to pond with less vegetation. In a place with a lot of weeds when using a jig the only real option is to have a fish hit it on the fall or first couple of movements before it gets mucked up. In order to do that you must be throwing at hard cover and targets.
my biggest pet peeve is muck and weeds on my baits i do throw jigs a lot but in any lake or pond that has enough weeds to get stuck on my jig i put the jig down and switch to a creature/beaver style bait i peg a tungsten weight and texas rig one. check out www.samatisbaits.com we have a few different soft plastic baits that resemble jigs. it's a cross between a spider grub and a beaver style bait.