Home Forums Fishing Freshwater Jigs?

Use jigs, how, and why? Color?

I use an 1/8 oz. jig head, 1/0 hook, & a 4" smoke colored Spring Grub for most my fishing in New River. They are great for smallmouth. In a lake for drop offs & places where it's easy to hang I like a 1/2 oz. weedless jig with a trailer worm or crawdad. I like black or dark blue. I use different speeds of retrieve & jigging motions depending on what I'm doing. Since I use no depth/fish finder I'm not into vertical jigging.

I use jigs for about everything that I fish for. Crappie, bluegill, trout, and bass. Everything from 1/80 oz #10 hook to 3/16oz #2/0.

I tie nymph patterns on small jig heads for trout and panfish, and use soft plastics for crappie and bass. Anything from 2' of water to 30'.

For whatever reason I start with a natural or a dark color first. If that doesn't do it, then I go with bright neon colors. If that doesn't work, then they aren't biting good enough to fish.

90% of the time I'm fishing for crappie, late Feb-November.

What fish are you fishing for?

I've been a dyed in the wool jig fisherman my entire life... I remember catching bass and Walleye when I was 8 years old on 2" Mr. Twisters... they were about all I fished.

Nowadays, I much prefer the 3" or 3.5" Berkley Ripple Shad on a 1/16 to 1/4 oz jighead depending on the presentation desired. They catch everything, and are the easiest "jig" to fish that I've ever come across. You can burn them fast, jig them, slow-roll them, troll them, or fish them Uber slow on the bottom.

Trout, Bass, Walleye, HUGE Crappie, hell... even Sucker Fish will smok'em.

All on the 3" with either 1/16oz or 1/8oz jigheads....

I do a lot of jig fishing for walleyes, bass, and panfish. 1/8 oz. jigs for walleye. I only go bigger for deep water, or heavy wind or current if river fishing. Crappie jigs with a small minnow. Waxies or plastics for crappies and sunnies too. I do a lot of flippin' for bass. My bass fishing mentor always used to drill it into me-"a bass drowns if in more than 4 ft. of water." I fish a couple "pressured'" lakes and the bass stick pretty tight to the shallow cover. Cattails, docks, tree tops, stumps. They all work. i've caught a lot of fish up under docks. If I can't flip or pitch to them I use a smaller jig with pork or a Powerbait and skip them up under the further reaches of the docks. For smallmouth, I go with a brown hair jig with brown pork or a trailer to mimic a crawfish.

I use a 1/64 buttoned jig that I tie for sunfish 99.9% of the time. I use an 1/32-1/8 with plastics for crappie and I tie a craft hair jigs on a 1/8 oz head. My buddy Pooley pours a arkie head jig I flip and skip.

I have had some success with 1/8 oz. marabou jigs in black, brown, and red cast or drifted under a casting bubble/bobber. BPS sells a brown/orange/brown marabou jig that must look like food, maybe a nymph, to fish, 'cause it is a trout, perch, crappie, and sunfish killer.

I have caught a lot of fish on mr. twister sassy shad, 3" version. Green or blue/white.

I catch a ton of bass, crappie, bluegills and even a few catfish on the jigs that my nephew makes. https://www.brushlunker.com/collections/pro-line-crappie-jigs

If you need to get deep they're hard to beat.