Image newrayann.comLine Weighing
The Key to Your Jig Fishing Success
Fishing is a sport that's relaxing and based on friendship, but when it gets a little competitive, start stringing up your jig stick! Jig fishing has a tendency to separate the best anglers from the rest, and it tends to separate the big fish from the little ones. Fish instinctively understand what can or cannot fit down their gullets. A small fish that's been eating well is usually not interested to attack and digest a bulky jig. Big fish, on the other hand, prefer a bulky meal that a jig represents to them. Five fish caught on jigs will be bigger than five fish caught on any other type of lure. Still, jig fishing is a difficult skill, and it takes a lot of effort even for a jig master to drill out those five fish. It's not easy!
A jig is not a lure for open water or unobstructed bottom. Jig fishing is usually done in something - heavy weed or wood cover, flooded brush, sunken tree tops, rock rubble, cypress knees, tulle berms, etc. The snaggier, the better. Even in open areas, a jig will do best when it contacts small, isolated pieces of cover or slightly rougher bottom patches.
A jig is first and foremost, a drop bait. Jig fishing in shallow water (0 to 6 feet) gets you many fish on the drop before the jig even hits the bottom. If the jig is not accosted on the way down, just let it lay motionless for a while. Fish cannot stand this and will pick the jig off the bottom as it lays there. Still no hit? Jiggle it around without moving it forward - and let it lay motionless again. Repeat the jiggle and pause once or twice, then wind it in and drop it in another spot. It really doesn't pay to try to work it across the bottom in shallow cover. If the fish did not hit you on the way down or on the pause between jiggles, it's probably not going to hit you as you swim or drag it back across bottom. So just wind it in quick and drop it in another spot. The initial drop is the key. The jig has lots of visible and audible appeal as it drops. And yes, use liberal doses of fish attractant. Rattles are optional. With or without rattles. I am happy with my catches.
Jig fishing in deeper water is different. You can cast it out away from you, and reel it steadily across bottom until it bounces into any sort of underwater cover. Once you contact cover, stop reeling and just jiggle and bumble the jig all into the cover while hardly moving it forward at all. Still use the jiggle and pause tactic, and expect to get picked up on the pause. In deep water, you will get fish that whack you when you reel up to make another cast. So always let the jig hang suspended for a moment when you reel up all the way. When you get six feet off the bottom, jiggle it as it hangs there and see if you get bit. No takers? Just reel up and cast again.
The key to detecting bites in either shallow or deep water is to always know what your line weighs. As an alternative, you could become a line watcher which means to stare intently at the line where it enters the water. If you see the line twitch, streak off to the side or any other unusual movement in the line, it means a fish is toying with your jig. In the long run, however, you will become a better jig fisherman if you learn to line weigh rather than line watch. Let's talk about this.
You should know what your jig feels like at all times:
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When it drops
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When it rests on the bottom
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When you are lifting it up off bottom
Your jig can never feel any different than it is - it will always feel the same. Sometimes wind can encumber your feel. In wind, you may need to upsize the jig weight to retain its feel.
If you ever feel anything different, it can only ever be one of two things:
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You are or will soon be snagged
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Or a fish has the jig!
Now, you often hear advice that if you feel anything different, you should heroically haul off and set the hook. But if you do that, you will have a snag more often than you have a fish. What to do? Load increasingly steady but slight tension onto the line and rod tip by drawing the tip up or reeling in ever so slowly. If it is a snag, you will feel a lack of life, and you should back off to try to work yourself out of the snag before you get snagged too deeply. If it is a fish, you will feel one of two things:
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Weightlessness. Absolutely nothing. Like your jig is floating in space. Reel in to get slack out of the line until you feel weight, load the rod tip, then whack away!
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Vibrancy. Some feeling of life. Trust me, you'll instinctively know it's a live feeling of some sort on your line even if it is indescribable to put into words. Reel in just enough to begin loading the rod tip and whack away!
If you believe you had a fish on, but it spit the bait before you can whack it, JUST LEAVE THE BAIT THERE. You can usually jiggle it a bit and they will often pick it up again. Then whack them ASAP! Largemouth may come back once. Smallies may give you numerous chances.
So that's called line weighing, and it is a better and more reliable skill to learn than line watching.
Line weighing is the key to jig fishing success.