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Archive - December 2007 Style H Hidden Head SpinnerbaitsPosted Dec-07-07 09:29:42 PST Style H Hidden Head Spinnerbaits.032 Light Wire Diameter. Style H have an .032 diameter wire arm, which is about as light as wires reasonably run on bass spinnerbaits. True, there are a few with wires of .030 or even .028 but they're rare, get the dickens twisted out of them and snap relatively quickly from metal vibration fatigue. So .032 is about as light a wire as I feel one can reasonably use while still having some nominal level of fish-ability, to land fish played carefully with a forgiving rod, to somewhat hold up against twistage, and resist quick metal vibration fatigue. Reason some anglers may want such a light .032 wire (despite the inherent drawbacks above) is their belief in and confidence that thinner diameter wire vibrates more and may at times attract more strikes than thicker wires that vibrate less. So the .032 wire (other things being equal) vibrates more than the most popular middle-of-the-road .035 or the heavy duty .040 wire arms most commonly used on bass spinnerbaits. Super Wire Arm. What helps out a lot especially with such light .032 diameter wire is that the Style H's have Super Wire. So it is up to 30% stronger, gets bent less and vibrates up to 50% more than ordinary wire in lab tests. In actual fishing, I feel that 30% extra lab test strength equates to many times more bend-resistance on the water. So really, Super Wire is the way to go with light wire arms. You get a more durable, more fish-able bait, and it vibrates more, which is the reason some anglers opt for a light wire in the first place.
So we're not trying to hide the hidden weight mass here, but using it to offer intriguing contrast and an additional dimension of appearance beneath the EZ Skirt.
Genuine Silver-Plated Blades. On the two above, these are genuine silver-plated blades which are rarely seen on spinnerbaits. Most all so-called silver blades are nickel-plated which looks very close but nickel has a darker flash than genuine silver. The brighter, whiter flash of silver may pay dividends in murky water or when trying to attract fish from further distances - such as in deep water. The brilliant shine and flash of genuine silver is something fish rarely see in a bass lure. Blades below are 24K gold-plated. Gold flashes and shines more than nickel-plated blades, but not as much as genuine silver.
The watermelon candy skirt on the black chartreuse Style H hidden head makes a great sunfish or tilapia presentation. Tattoo Tackle Walking Stick ~ Topwater Fishing LurePosted Dec-06-07 08:41:45 PST Inner Space, the Final Frontier Tackled by Tattoo
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How'd Tattoo's new Walking Stick come to be?I'm talking about the new 1 oz Walking Stick topwater lure that Mike's rolling out now. It's brand new, and Mike pretty much perfected it and finalized it for saltwater over the summer. It's just getting out to Mike's dealers now is how I understand it. A 90 pound bluefin was landed on one of the final tests off Stellwagon Bank in late summer. I am not 100% sure, but I think some kind of potential Rhode Island state record albacore was landed on the Walking Stick recently. Mike sent one to an editor of Saltwater Sportsman magazine and as I understand it, that editor caight a grand slam (3 or 4 different species) on it on the first try out with it.
Anyway, it's an idea that originated in freshwater research and ended up benefiting saltwater anglers.
My hat's off to Mike because except for that pen that writes upside down underwater, the NASA research program has not spawned any great new products that benefit anglers. However, Tattoo Tackle's research into "inner space" has rewarded us all!
Walking Stick Write-up in SaltWater Sportsman Magazine. If you get the SaltWater Sportsman magazine, check out the Tattoo Walking Stick. It is featured on page 96 in the December 2008 issue, or click here to read what Joe Cermele wrote about the Walking Stick in his blog on the Saltwater Sportsman web site:
Walking Stick Video Footage. Here is a link to a short YouTube Clip of some testing from one of the Tattoo’s Tackle team members, Rob Taylor. If you watch closely, you can see the plug skipping, jumping, and zig-zagging right before the fish smack it.
- Click here:
Tattoo Walking Stick ~ Topwater Fishing Lure
Length: 4-1/2 inches
Weight: 1 ounce
Construction: Through-wired
Type: Floating, walk-the-dog pencil popper
How to Rig It. To rig the Walking Stick, most guys from the boat are using loop knots when they are chasing sharp-eyed albies, bonito and tuna in clear, open water. Any extra hardware that the fish might be able to see is not to their advantage. When fishing the turbulent surf zone, a small, strong metal clip works fine.
How to Work It. The Walking Stick has all the weight in its tail, to sail a long distance, and for its tail-walking action. As far as working the lure, work it like a pencil popper to get it to zig-zag, pop, gurgle, and skip on the surface. It’s so small that you don’t really have to work the rod violently to get it to dance. With a stiff 7 or 8 foot rod from the boat, quick twitching will get this thing to walk the walk. Casting out and just ripping it across the surface works as well. Like anything, it all depends on what the fish want.
Super Casting Distance. The Walking Stick casts swell for such a small plug. You can really empty your spool with it, more than other topwaters its size. The wood body is only four inches long and 3/4 inch at its widest. It's about the most aerodynamic shape possible. For such a small body to weigh one ounce is actually heavy for its size. It is pretty ballistic because all the lead weight is right in the tail. The weight is inserted right onto the wire at the tail end.
With the streamlined shape and all the lead in the rear of the plug, you will be surprised how far that you can launch this thing with a ten foot rod.
Whether you ply the open beaches or haunt the back bays, on deck or on foot, give the Walking Stick a try!
Tattoo Walking Stick ~ Blue White
New in package
Tattoo Walking Stick ~Yellow / Red Head
New in package
Tattoo Walking Stick ~ Zuri (Fluorescent Pink / Chartreuse / White)
New in package
Tattoo Walking Stick ~ White
Tattoo Walking Stick ~Chartreuse White
Tattoo Walking Stick ~ Yellow White
Arkey Jigs Show Flair for Finesse
Arkey Jigs Show Flair for Finesse
The Arkey style jig has proven time and again to catch bigger bass on average than most other bass lures. Who knows why, but it is true. The Arkey jig is one of the most productive bass lures ever made.
The particular Arkey jig you see here is one of the most popular jigs on the planet. Many millions of this same jig have been cast from the same molds and have appeared under many brand labels for many years, but always with a heavy wire flipping hook for fishing with the heaviest kind of bass rods, reels and line. This is one of the first times, however, the Arkey jigs you see here have been cast with a lighter wire Gamakatsu hook and thinner, more collapsible brush guard.
The merits of doing this are two-fold:
- First, the advanced angler get the superior performance of the Arkey style head for finesse fishing applications.
- Second, the less-seasoned jig fisherman gets the benefits of a lighter (yet still strong) hook and softer (yet still snag-resistant) weedguard that make it easier for the average angler to succeed at jig fishing with the lighter rods and lighter lines that casual anglers tend to use.
Why the Arkey Works So Swell. The wide face and broad belly of an Arkey jig lets it climb up and over bulky bottom debris like it's a 4x4 SUV. Where a more streamlined jig head would get wedged in a crack or crevice, the Arkey jig goes right over it like an offroad ATV. That's why the bulbous Arkey jig head is an ideal choice around laydown logs, stumps, trees and rocks, deep or shallow. It has a round, widened belly so it stands up, keeps the hook pointed up. The broad face and wide shoulders let it bounce and deflect off many underwater objects, and that kind of noisy, bumbling type contact is a strike trigger designed into the Arkey jig shape. At the same time, the face and shoulder shape helps turn the hook away from any obstacle it contacts, and the stand-up stability of the Arkey shape prevents the hook from rolling on its side so it doesn't snag.
Wood is Good. Arkey style jigs were originally designed, as the name implies, in Arkansas over 45 years back by Bob Carnes when many of the bass fishing impoundments there were newly-made. With so much freshly-flooded standing timber, the Arkey jig was devised to fish through the trees without snagging. Still to this day, the Arkey jig style is the best head shape for fishing wood, be it stumps, laydowns, knees, limbs and trunks of standing timber or whatever wood type cover, shallow or deep.
Hitting Rock Bottom. Although originally designed for wood, Bob Carnes quickly discovered the Arkey also excels at climbing uphill on deep water ledges. Indeed, the Arkey's equally as good as a football jig on any hard or rocky bottom too. Whether gravel bars, stair-step ledges, round river rock, glacial boulder beds, the Arkey excels wherever rocky cover abounds. With some hard cases such as square chunk rock or sharp-edged broken rock slides, the Arkey performs even better (snags less) than a football jig on sharp-edged square rock.
1/4 oz Finesse Jig ~ Black Blue Flash
3/8 oz Finesse Jig ~ Black Blue Flash
1/2 oz Finesse Jig ~ Black Blue Flash
Hole-In-One Skirt Technology
Hole-In-Ones first came out in late 2005, but it is only in 2007 that the technology to produce half-size short-haired Hole-In-One skirts has been possible. The Hole-In-One style skirt locks the short hairs in place so they can never be pulled off the skirt by a fish, and they can never wiggle out from under the collar. On standard collars, the retainer band softens and loosens with use. With a standard full-length skirt, this loosening of the collar is not as big a problem as with short-haired finesse skirts which will fall out from under a loosened collar. With the Hole-In-One style skirts, fish can't pull the short hairs off the skirt, and the strands can never wiggle out from under the collar.
Inner Core. First, these finesse skirts are built using Hole-In-One bands, meaning there is an inner core (clear colored in this photo) that the skirt is banded around.
Outer Band. Second, there is a second collar (black in this photo) that is put around the outside, that sandwiches the strands between the inner core and outer band.
Glued in Place. Third, and what makes Hole-In-One skirts the best is that a light application of transparent glue is used to lock everything into one unit. Un this way, the short hairs can never wriggle out from off the collar. You rarely see this glue at all, as this photo shows no clue of the glue. Yet every strand is locked practically permanently in place on the collar, and it is unlikely a short-striking or hard-fighting fish can pull any of the strands out from under the retainer collar.
Short Hair Finesse Skirts
FINESSE SKIRTS. These half-size skirts have a short fuzzy forward-facing stubble. An important breakthrough in 2007 is the technology to make these short-hair finesse skirts with the strands locked in place using Hole-In-One collars. These have an inner core tube and an outer band, and colorless light glue. It's hard to see there's any glue, but it's there, which is especially important to lock and keep the short ends from slipping out.
Finesse skirts have the same number of strands (44 to 50 strands depending on color) as full size skirts, but finesse skirts are exactly one half as long as full-size skirts.
Arkey Jigs ~ Finesse Versus Power
Comparison of Arkey Finesse Versus Power Jigs:
The hooks in the photo are premium Gamakatsu flat eye jig hooks. The hooks appear blotchy in color, but only in the photo, not in reality. The jigs, the hooks and the paint colors all look far better in reality than in the photos.
Points in common:
Differences are:
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Finesse Gear to Use ~ Rods, Reels, Line
Gary Yamamoto Casting Rod ~ Medium Fast Model. Gary Yamamoto has produced several fantastic new rod models for 2007. Shown here is the medium fast new casting rod model by Yamamoto. I don't think I''ve ever used a better rod for 12 to 14 pound test deepwater finesse jigging applications, or any jig application, shallow or deep, in the 12 to 14 pound test range with jigs from 1/4 to 1/2 oz heads, including the finesse jigs shown here, Yamamoto double tail hula grubs, tube jigs or any kind of jig fishing where a medium heavy application is required, this new Yamamoto rod is a sweetheart. The Arkey finesse jigs shown here have medium wire Gamakatsu hooks and more flexible fiberguard matches perfectly with medium/heavy rod and 12 to 14 pound test Sugoi fluorocarbon line.
Gary Yamamoto Spinning Rod ~ Medium Heavy Model. Gary Yamamoto currently offers three awesome spinning rods. The medium heavy model with ten pound test mono or castable fluorocarbon is absolutely perfect for finesse jig fishing, especially with the 1/4 to 1/2 oz jig sizes shown here. The Arkey finesse jigs shown here have medium wire hooks and more flexible fiberguards that work fine with stout spinning tackle like the medium heavy action Yamamoto spinning rod shown here. Stick to medium wire diameter (yet still strong) hooks like these Arkey finesse jigs with spinning gear.
Trailer Choices
A jig with a skirt only, but no trailer, will catch few fish. No jig is complete without a trailer added to it.
The Yamamoto Flappin' Hog is both compact and bulky at the same time. The finesse skirt has only half the strand length of a normal skirt. So the finesse skirt really highlights a short but bulky trailer much better. With a full size skirt, such a trailer would get lost in the strands. On a half-size finesse skirt, however, this type trailer is presented the best possible way.
Many of your favorite finesse trailers are worth trying!
Don't Forget the Scent
There's endless speculation among anglers whether fish attractants do or do not work as advertised. They do. At least for me. Especially with soft baits. I first began to use fish attractants in the early eighties. Dr. Juice was the first attractant I tried, soon to be followed by Fish Formula and a host of other attractants. After 25 years of experience, I can tell you they work, especially with soft baits. Some of the best attractants today are Gary Yamamoto's own fish attractant, Kick'n Bass and MegaStrike (shown above). I like the ease of MegaStrike's gel tube because it can be applied and stored with less mess. Squeezable bottles of non-gel liquid with spout type nozzles make more mess on you, the boat, and in storage. With MegaStrike's gel tube, there is still a mess, just less. Why put up with the mess? Because soft baits with attractant catch more bass than without. Twenty-five years of fishing with and without attractant have proven this to me beyond any doubt. If you don't want the mess (on you, your boat, your lunch, your rods, reels, everything you touch, etc.), that's understandable. Also understand that if you're not using an attractant with soft baits, you are not catching all the bass you could.
I like to keep whatever trailers I am using in their original bags. This way, it is easy for me to add a pea-sized glob of MegaStrike gel or a few drops of Yamamoto's liquid fish attractant or Kick'n Bass into each fresh bag of trailers when first open the bag for a day's fishing trip.
During hot times of the year, the MegaStrike gel will liquefy. I do not know whether you can see the liquefied MegaStrike remaining in the half-used bag of jig trailers (Yamamoto Flappin' Hogs) above. However, the attractant is in there. You don't need to put in much at all. A pea-sized glob or just a few drops. It will quickly work itself all over all the baits in a bag. It will give them a lifelike sheen coating which will disperse, causing a visible oily and olfactory-detectable "chum" slick in the water column and on the surface above the bait. If any baits had gotten kinked or bent while stored in the bag, the oil helps relax and unkink the baits. With heat from the sun beating down on the bags on the boat deck, it won't be long before the oils and sun's heat help restore all baits back to their originally-molded perfect shapes without kinks and bends.
I do not add fish attractant to the jigs nor skirts. Enough attractant gets on the trailers alone, and it is the trailer the fish tends to strike.
Bass hit jigs different ways. Some say that bass engulf jigs in their entirety as the jig falls, and that may be true. Swimming jigs along steadily, however, many times bass will nip and tug at the tail tips to begin with, and when a jig is at rest laying on bottom, bass often grab the tip of a trailer and yank it rather than engulfing the entire jig. If a bass nips and tugs at a swimming jig or if it grabs and yanks on a resting jig, if there is no attractant or if there is no expendable part that comes off in the fish's mouth, then the chances the fish will wheel around and strike again are iffy at best. Most likely, you will not get a second strike. At least that's what my research proves. On the other hand, when an attractant-coated part of a Flappin' Hog gets sacrificed to a hungry fish, it convinces the fish it's good to eat and has just been injured. It's almost certain you'll be struck again as the fish comes back to finish the job. All you need to do at that point is get prepared to set the hook.
Short-haired finesse skirts let trailers like this attractant-coated Yamamoto Flappin' Hog take center stage as the main strike target.
And that's the beauty behind a succulent trailer glistening with attractant and fished on an Arkey finesse jig dressed with a short skirt.
Trimming the Fiberguard
How to Trim a Weedless JigMany moons ago, I cut the fiberguards off jigs entirely. I fished jigs with fully-exposed hooks in the heaviest cover imaginable. This was in order to teach myself the hard way how to fish jigs in heavy cover. I reasoned that if I could master how to get an exposed hook jig into thick cover (the easy part) and out (not so easy), then it would be a cinch when I resumed using a fiberguard. Without any fiberguard, you need to land your cast precisely where you want it, often in the thickest part of the cover, or the exact spot you want to work it. In dense weeds, you would need to land right in a hat-sized hole in the weeds, for example. Once it hits the water, you really cannot move it at all. Just let it sink and wait for what seems like forever without moving it at all. Fish will often pick it up, even after a long, long time without moving it. If that doesn't happen, just shake the line, quivering the jig without moving it forward. After shaking and quivering the line for about ten seconds, wait for another long, long time, which is when the hit will come. I call this the "shake and bake" tactic. Repeat shaking and baking about four or five times. All the while, the jig hasn't moved an inch. You shake the line, not the jig. When you finally do feel a need to move the jig forward, do it ever-so-slowly, hardly moving at all, until it bumps some obstacle - a rock, wood, weed edge or whatever. Now, just keep backing off and bumping the object, back off and bump, back off and bump several times, then wait a long time without moving the jig. I refer to this as "knocking on the door." Repeat knocking on the door, but make sure to pause. The bumps calls fish over to see who's at the door, and when you pause, they answer by hitting your jig. Even if the jig snags onto an object, never mind. Just shake it patiently and attractively while it's snagged. Always make painstakingly long pauses in between the short bouts of shaking. When you pause, fish will pull the snagged jig off whatever it's stuck on. It took me two seasons to get good at it, but that's how I learned to fish jigs in heavy cover with fully-exposed hooks. The same applies to jigs with fiberguards, except they snag less. In case you do not want to learn the way I did, I offer you the tips below that tell you how to trim a fiberguard to best protect a jig hook from snags. Why do you need to trim a fiberguard at all? Too full a fiberguard may block the strike, impede the jig's way into the mouth, and resist your hook set. So trimming the fiberguard (while still preventing snags) reduces these potential problems.
In open water with no obstructions swimming a jig above the bottom, there's no need for a fiberguard and it can be cut off entirely. In light cover, often as few as 7 or 8 fibers are all you need. It goes against logic to buy a jig with a bushy fiberguard and then cut off all or most of it, but that can be your best option in open water or light cover. To begin with, it is better to cut off too few rather than too many. You can always trim a couple more later. Especially if you are not hooking a high percentage of fish, your fiberguard may still be a little too thick. So you may want to trim a couple more fibers off. It's a trade-off between better hooksets (fewer fibers) and better snag-resistance (more fibers).
I've been trimming jigs this same way over twenty-five years. It's not that I'm set in my ways. I have heard of and tried other ways to trim jigs, but keep coming back to the steps above because they work for me. Over time, what has changed is the availability of lighter and varying size fiberguards. Years ago, there was really only one size fiberguard (or so it seemed) - extra full and extra long with extra thick fibers. Today, there are light (.018), medium (.021) and heavy (.024) action fibers, base sizes (of the entire bundle) in 1/64" increments from 1/16" through 5/32" (which determines fiber count), and from 1-3/8" to 1-7/8" lengths available. So jigs today can come off the shelf with fairly different fiberguards. Nevertheless, finding a jig that needs no trimming is not common. It's like finding a pair of fine dress slacks that fit perfectly off the rack without needing to be tailored. If the pants fit you, they may not fit other customers as good. So, good pants are often made long and unhemmed so everyone may tailor them. Likewise, good jigs are often left a little too full and a little too long. It's intended that you tailor them to fit your needs perfectly. The way I trim all jigs (if they need trimming) is as above. The power jig is molded and painted with a metal pin temporarily in place of the fiberguard. Then the pin is pulled and the fiberguard is glued in. The finesse jig is molded and painted with the fiberguard in place, which seats the fiberguard a little more securely. In either case, however, you can expect a small percentage of fiberguards to pop out from handling them, from fish or hard use. Sometimes a fiberguard will come lose during the trimming process. This is not a mistake or badly-made fiberguard. It's just their nature. Just like an egg is fragile, that doesn't mean it's a defect if one's shell gets broken in the egg carton. It's just the way eggs (and fiberguards) are made. Point is, fiberguards may loosen. Don't pull or tug on the fiberguard more than you have to.
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Fishing with Arkey Power Jigs
Fishing with Arkey Power Jigs
You ideally need to throw the Arkey Power Jig on heavy line and a stout rod. Whether flipping it in shallow water, or banging it on deep ledges, humps and points, this is a power fishing jig requiring a stout rod, strong line and it has heavy wire hook. If you use a rod, reel and line that's too light, you'll find it hard to set this heavy hook every time.
\Arkey Style Jig Head. An Arkey jig has proven time and again to catch bigger bass on average than most other bass lures. Who knows why, but it is true. The Arkey jig is one of the most productive bass lures ever made.
What makes it so successful is its versatility. The wide face and broad belly of an Arkey jig lets it climb up and over bulky bottom debris like it's a 4x4 SUV. Where a more streamlined jig head would get wedged in a crack or crevice, the Arkey jig goes right over it like an offroad ATV. That's why the bulbous Arkey jig head is an ideal choice around laydown logs, stumps, trees and rocks, deep or shallow.
It has a round, widened belly so it stands up, keeps the hook pointed up. The broad face and wide shoulders let it bounce and deflect off many underwater objects, and that kind of noisy, bumbling type contact is a strike trigger designed into the Arkey jig shape. At the same time, the face and shoulder shape helps turn the hook away from any obstacle it contacts, and the stand-up stability of the Arkey shape prevents the hook from rolling on its side so it doesn't snag.
Wood is Good. Arkey style jigs were originally designed, as the name implies, in Arkansas over 45 years back by Bob Carnes when many of the bass fishing impoundments there were newly-made. With so much freshly-flooded standing timber, the Arkey jig was devised to fish through the trees without snagging. Still to this day, the Arkey jig style is about the best head shape for fishing wood, be it stumps, laydowns, knees, limbs and trunks of standing timber or whatever wood type cover, shallow or deep.
Hitting Rock Bottom. Although originally designed for wood, Bob Carnes quickly discovered the Arkey also excels at climbing uphill on deep water ledges. Indeed, the Arkey's equally as good as a football jig on any hard or rocky bottom too. Whether gravel bars, stair-step ledges, round river rock, glacial boulder beds, the Arkey excels wherever rocky cover abounds. With some hard cases such as square chunk rock or sharp-edged broken rock slides, the Arkey performs even better (snags less) than a football jig on sharp-edged square rock.
Flat Eye Jig Hook. Unlike traditional jigs, the jig hook eye is turned crosswise for perfect alignment with the flat Arkey head shape. This planar match of the head shape and hook eye results in superior hooksetting ability. The flat eye Arkey consistently hooks fish in the roof of the mouth.
- Premium Mustad Ultra Point Hook. Many anglers haven't yet realized the quality improvements of Mustad hooks within the last few years. In the last few years, Mustad has really outdone themselves to produce some of the very highest quality, industry-leading hooks. The Mustad Ultra Point is needle sharp point with incredible strength and durability. The Ultra Point is designed not to bend or roll over. The Ultra Point lasts longer under tough power fishing conditions. This is a heavy gauge wire diameter hook for landing big bass with heavy line, plus a black nickel finish. 3/0 in the 1/4 oz, 4/0 in 3/8 oz, 5/0 in 1/2 oz and 5/0 in the 3/4 oz size.
- Heavy Duty Fiberguard. Just like the hook on this jig, the fiberguard is heavy also, but can be trimmed to various degrees of snag-resistance. Some say the fiberguard is an unnatural-looking part of a jig, but I don't think so. Most anything a bass eats has some sort of fins or spiny rays or spindly legs or antennae or whatever, and a properly trimmed and fanned fiberguard fits right in with all that. You can even use your finger to divide the fiberguard down the center into two halves, and that's not unlike the appearance of two waving craw claws when you do that. The fiberguard fits right in and does not detract from the natural look of a jig.
- Double Keeper Collar. This is a significant advantage. First, it is quite difficult for a fish to ever pull the skirt down. Second, the spiked keeper helps hold soft plastic trailers without easily slipping down the hook. For some odd reason, many other brands of jigs have no trailer keeper barb at all, but Bassdozer's does.
Rattles Sold Separately. Rattles are often used on Arkey jigs, and these skirt bands have two sockets to accept two industry standard rattle pods. Rattles not included. Rattle pods sold separately in Bassdozer's Store. Better yet, try the easy on/easy off rattle nunchakus also sold in Bassdozer's Store. The nunchakus have more action, more noise and they move out of the way when a fish hits. Thank you.
Today, it's safe to say any good bass angler anywhere in the world has one or more Arkey style jigs in their tackle collection.
About forty years ago, Bob Carnes prototyped the first one. He named it after his home state, Arkansas.
Famous Arkansas fisheries like Table Rock, Beaver and Bull Shoals were relatively untapped impoundments when Carnes fished them forty years ago. They had a lot of standing flooded timber for which Carnes created his pioneering jig.
There weren't any preconceived notions, no blueprints nor other ideas to follow. The fledgling fiberguard concept was incorporated to help protect the hook point from snagging in the forests of flooded trees. Even with the innovative fiberguard, the evolution of the head shape (and position of the hook eye) constantly centered around how to protect the hook (and the head itself) from snagging under shredded wet bark, in notches of tree limbs, on trunks or stumps. After years of working on it, it simply came down to what head shape Carnes could make that would result in the highest survival of a jig in that kind of jungle. There are lots of sunken cedars still in the lakes around Arkansas and development of this jig style simply came down to whatever could best go through that kind of heavy cover - and survive to be cast again.
Back in Carnes' day, jigs were cast through the crowns of sunken trees, and anglers fished drop-offs. Instead of fishing down drop-offs like most anglers today do (keeping the boat over deep water and casting at the shoreline), anglers back in the day tended to put the boat on the shallowest part (closest to the shoreline), cast out and fish uphill. This is still often the better choice when fish pull back from and hold out off the shoreline.
Unlike today, no one flipped jigs at shoreline cover back then. Flipping was unheard of. Today however, the Arkey style jig is so popular for flipping heavily-wooded shorelines, that anglers in some regions simply call them "flipping jigs."
A Lesson in Impact. Once the jig's snagless design was taken as far as it could, Carnes' final efforts were to refine the jig's face to make as much sudden vibration as possible whenever it bashed into anything on the way uphill or hit a limb on a tree. You can think of that as a lure action that Carnes designed into the jig face. That sudden shock of impact of banging it into trees and banging it into ledges or rocks on an uphill retrieve, Carnes realized, has a great strike triggering effect. So he strived to perfect that strike trigger in this jig style. More often than not, the jig style created by Bob Carnes forty years ago will still get nipped the instant it bounces off and work its way through snaggy spots in wood or ledges without getting stuck.
And there you have it, my friend. The story of a jig style that was an innovation in its day. It worked well then and still works. Virtually unchanged, this jig style remains one of the best bass lures ever made.Most anglers may never use a jig as heavy as 3/4 oz. There are plenty of 1/4, 3/8 and 1/2 oz jigs on the market, but it is hard to find good 3/4 oz jigs for sale. I have several customers who needed these heavier Arkey jigs. So here they are.
A Lesson in Presence. Bigger, heavier jigs like this 3/4 oz size have a larger presence in the water that appeals to better-than-average size bass. It seems that bigger bass go for more bulk, more bump, more mass... that's really what they want. They tend to not be as interested in lighter or smaller jigs. Conversely, small fish tend not to be as interested in heavier or bigger jigs. Some anglers equate heavy jigs with deep water, and they are right, but not entirely. You will tend to appeal to a better grade of bass on this 3/4 oz jig even in only inches of water. Bigger bass may not make the effort to whack every little minnow that saunters by, but they will do what it takes when they detect the presence and mass of this bigger (bigger = heavier) jig. Make no mistake, this is all about the head weight. You may use the same size skirt and same size trailer on a light and a heavy jig head, but you will catch a better grade of bass on the heavy jig head.
3/4 oz Arkey Jig Head ~ Black
3/4 oz Arkey Jig Head ~ Green Pumpkin
3/4 oz Arkey Jig Head ~ Brown Pumpkin
A Jig's Three Key Parts. The jig head and jig skirt matter much, yet it is the trailer that's the most attractive part of a jig's three key parts:
- Head. The head has the least attraction. When painted, it can add a basic color blob - often no more than basic black, brown or green. It can add color contrast such as a chartreuse head with a black skirt or a red head with a white skirt. Those are examples of basic color blobs. Taken to the extreme, when highly-detailed, the head can add flashy eyes, gills, a baitfish-shaped head. It can add a flash of red, pink or orange gills flapping or other color accent flashes, say a gold or chartreuse flash... but jig heads are basically blobs. Jig heads need to perform a lot of functions, but looking charming is not a high priority.
- Skirt. The skirt is attractive, but not attractive enough to evoke strikes on its own. A jig with just a skirt (no trailer) is a poor fish attractor. Think of the skirt as a picnic blanket. Think of the trailer as the succulent smoked ham centerpiece placed on the picnic blanket. If you just tossed the country ham into a grassy meadow like it was a bowling ball, you would completely overlook it. When you spread the picnic blanket out on the grass first, and place the ham proudly in the center, the ham now becomes almost impossible for you to overlook! The picnic blanket (jig skirt) may be very good-looking but not good enough to eat. The mouth-watering ham (jig trailer) is what the skirt presents.
- Trailer. The most attractive part, and the centerpiece of your presentation.
For its softness, suppleness and fluid movement in the water, I like Superpork as a jig trailer. I favor the bulkiest sizes they make, like the Senior and Bubba sizes. I rely mainly on the black and the brown pork. The black really keeps its color. The brown color whitens quickly in use, but bass do not seem to mind the whitened brown color.
Tips on Color Selection
One key question I ask myself: Is the water darker or lighter than medium dark water? Depending on the answer, I will start to fish with:
- Black Jigs. In water that's darker than medium dark water or under low light conditions, I tend toward black pork on black jigs (including black/blue, black/red, black/junebug and other dark jigs like that).
- Brown Jigs. In water that's lighter than medium dark water, I tend toward brown pork on brown jigs (including brown/orange, brown/green, brown/purple, peanut butter jelly and other brownish jigs). I also favor green soft baits on brown jigs at times.
- Black/Brown Jigs. In water that's right down the middle of medium dark, I'll use a brown jig with black pork... or black jig with brown pork. It doesn't matter which.
If you don't like to mess with pork (it's messy), then bulky black or brown Yamamoto double tail skirted hula grubs (97 series) or Yamamoto Kreatures (5 series) work swell instead of pork. I rig both types of these trailers with the "skirt to front" such that the soft plastic skirts on the trailers tuck up under the silicone skirts on the jigs. Rigged this way, these are pretty bulky big jigs for big bass. Most anglers think of these big jigs as shallow water flipping tools, and they are right. But they work equally well for better-than-average size bass in deep water too, as deep as you care to try. You will get better-than-average size largemouth, smallmouth and spotted bass on these big jigs no matter what depth water.
At times I use the Yamamoto Craw Worms (3 series and 3M series) or single tail grubs (18 series) as trailers too. But since the 97-series double tail skirted hula grubs and the Kreatures are bulkier, I prefer them whenever possible. I rig all types of these soft baits all the way up onto the jig keeper collar so the soft plastic baits tuck up right under the jig's silicone skirt.
I do not use green pork as much as brown or black. Green Superpork seems a little off-colored to me (it's not really like watermelon or green pumpkin), and it fades quickly to a blue gray kind of green. Yes it works, but on green jigs (including green pumpkin, watermelon and watermelon/red jigs), I don't use pork as much as soft plastic trailers. However, a black pork works swell at times on green jigs.
On green jigs, I mostly use matching green soft bait trailers such as Yamamoto's double tail skirted hula grubs (97 series) or Yamamoto's Kreature (5 series) in assorted green pumpkin, watermelon and watermelon/red colors.Here are some (not all) of the colors I have added to the store in the 3/4 oz Arkey jig size. In some cases, I just can't get the colors to photograph correctly. Especially some of the lighter green colors tend to come out too yellow in the photos. All look better in the hand than they do on the computer screen. Many of the skirts have colors that only show correctly when placed under water.
With pork, I tend to use a full, untrimmed skirt. Pork seats on the bend of the hook and tends to showcase itself as separate and apart from the skirt. So I tend to leave the skirt full with pork.
With soft bait trailers, I may trim, shape or "layer" the skirt strands in a number of different ways. This is because soft baits I thread all the way up onto the hook shank and tuck them up right under the jig skirt. So rather than always obscuring a large part of a soft bait trailer under a full skirt, I may at times trim the skirt in order to help present more of the soft bait trailer's features and actions. It's not hard to do. Two of the easiest ways to trim a skirt are to make it half full. Just cut half the skirt off. Either cut off the forward-facing half of the skirt (as in the photo at right) or cut off the backward-facing half of the skirt (not shown). Either way, you achieve a sparse peek-a-boo skirt effect that shows more of the underlying trailer.
Tips for Trimming the Skirt
There are several easy options to trim skirts. You don't need to, but it often adds fun and confidence to score with different approaches. Think of the skirt as a tablecloth or picnic blanket you use to best present the succulent jig trailer to a bass. The trailer can be pork, a soft bait shaped like a pork chunk, crawdad, a beaver style, single tail grub, creature, double tail grub to name a few of the more popular jig trailer options. In the Southern USA, it seems more anglers tend to favor the soft plastic chunks. Across the northern states, anglers seem to like craws and across the midsection, anglers seem to favor double tail grubs as jig trailers. Most any soft bait will work at times (or pork), and that's really what the fish has its eye on, the trailer. So you may modify the skirt in different ways to best present the trailer:
- This is the full skirt. It's the standard way most all jigs come, with the long end forward. When the long strands billow backward, all the strand ends fall equal in length. This is just about the bulkiest and most common presentation, but some trailers can get covered up or lost in the skirt.
- This is a full skirt reversed that I sometimes favor for real pork chunks or soft plastic chunks. Pork or plastic chunks are seated on the round bend of the hook. This lets chunks ride higher, separate from and not buried under the skirt. By reversing the full length skirt, it shows off a chunk even better. The long strands lay low away from a chunk, and the short strands do not reach far back enough to cover the chunk.
- This half skirt helps show off a trailer like a soft plastic craw, for example, and it enables you to downsize the trailer size too. The beauty of this is it lets you downsize your presentation, but you do not have to downsize your rod, reel, line or hook strength. It's still power fishing - but with a finesse presentation.
- The half skirt reversed goes great with a beaver type trailer, for example. The longer strands umbrella all around and accentuate but do not cover up the trailer. This is a good skirt style to bring out contrasting colors such as a green monkey shine half skirt reversed over a black beaver type trailer, for example.
It's not hard to trim your jig skirt, it's fun, and there's nothing critical about how long or short to cut it. Just enjoy!
Tips for Trimming the Fiberguard
Jig manufacturers don't know where or how you will be using their jigs, so they usually make the fiberguards extra long and extra thick. The manufacturer expects you to thin out and trim short the fiberguard to match your fishing conditions. Think of it this way, you wouldn't wear a pair of unhemmed slacks right off a rack, would you? So why would you fish with an untrimmed fiberguard?
Right off the shelf, the fiberguards are extra long and extra thick for extra heavy cover. Most of the time, however. you will not always be fishing extra heavy cover. So you may want to thin out and trim short the fiberguard to match your fishing conditions.
Truly, the Arkey jig style excels in very heavy cover, sparse cover or even relatively open water. It's great in rocks, brush, trees, stumps, and laydowns. All you have to do is trim the fiberguard to match the fishing spot you're in. Here's how:
- Thinning. First, you may want to remove some of the fibers entirely. How many to remove? That depends on how thick the cover you intend to fish. You will rarely need the full 30-40 fibers the jig comes with. Rather, most cover can be fished using 12-20 fibers. How many fibers to remove also depends on the jig head weight. A 1/4 oz jig can get through worse snags with less fibers than a 3/4 oz jig. So it is all relative and depends on a knack and know-how only gained with experience.
To remove fibers, cut them at the very base of the stem, where they are glued into the jighead cavity. Do not pluck them out of the jighead with pliers. That leaves a gaping hole in the jighead, causing the remaining fibers to also loosen and fall out. You don't want that. So cut the fibers you do not want flush off with the jighead, but do not pluck the "roots" out.
- Shortening. Next, you can shorten the remaining fibers. Some anglers skip the shortening step. Up to you. If you do shorten them, never cut them shorter than above the hook point. Better to leave them a little longer instead of too short.
- Fanning. Now fan the fibers out to both sides of the hook point. Make a fan effect with the fibers to protect the hook point from snags not just in front, but from the sides as well. In fact, this side protection is more important than from the front. It's hard to imagine most jigs getting snagged from directly in front. Most get snagged when they cam (roll) onto their sides. So fan the fiberguard to gain this side deflection/protection for your hook.
Some say the fiberguard is an unnatural-looking part of a jig, but I don't think so. Most anything a bass eats has some sort of fins or spiny rays or spindly legs or antennae or whatever, and a properly trimmed and fanned fiberguard fits right in with all that. You can even use your finger to divide the fiberguard down the center into two halves, and that's not unlike the appearance of two waving craw claws when you do that.
Arkey Jig Skirt Color Suggestions
Arkey Jig Skirt Color Suggestions
3/4 oz Arkey Jig ~ Black Neon ~ Rattles
Black red jigs like this tend to be favored by anglers who fish delta, bayou, swampy or brackish estuaries/rivers along the Atlantic, Gulf or California coastline. European bass anglers also heavily use black red jigs and baits. Otherwise, the average angler hardly uses black red jigs today - but it wasn't always so. As little as fifteen years ago, it was even money whether an angler would claim a black blue jig or a black red jig worked best. There were many anglers who favored one versus the other. Then somehow the black red jig all but disappeared. Who knows why? Black blue has become the most popular jig color worldwide. This is compounded by the irony that, in the late 1990s, jig flipping legend Denny Brauer rose to the top of the bass fishing world and dominated top pro tournaments by adding a black neon (black with red glitter) flipping tube to his flipping jig regimen. Still to this day, black neon is the number one flipping tube color. Yet a black neon flipping jig skirt has never become popular, and the black red-tipped jig skirts of old are long gone. If you think that flipping a black neon tube works swell, wait until you try this new black neon skirt - for jigs, spinnerbaits and buzzbaits. You'll rediscover why many old timers favored the black red skirt over black blue. Maybe you will too!
3/4 oz Arkey Jig ~ Rusty Red Craw ~ Rattles
Some years ago, whether it was seven, eight, ten years back, ripping red lipless rattling crankbaits through grass in springtime was "discovered" in Texas. It was big news. The average angler was unfamiliar with the whole concept of red crankbaits. Even to this day, many anglers in other states still have not tried it. They still consider red baits to be a Texas phenomenon. Truth is, any angler anywhere in the world who has the gumption to try it, he or she will see that red crankbaits work at any latitude or longitude, especially from late winter through late spring, but also year-round. Now the red craw phenomena applies to jigs too, thanks to this custom-crafted blend of mottled red and black craw pattern with hints of rusty brown in it. You can't go wrong using a black pork or black with red flake soft plastic trailer with this skirt. It's not just for dirty water either. From pre- to post-spawn, even in the clearest water, bass can't stand to see red jigs. They can't help but smash them!
June Bug Bluegill Skirts. A blend of black, purple, metallic purple strands with purple and blue metal foil scales and superfine red glitter.
Arkey Power jig heads have a blend of black, metallic purple and metallic blue paints too. Stout flipping strength hooks.
3/8 oz Arkey Power Jig ~ June Bug Bluegill
1/2 oz Arkey Power Jig ~ June Bug Bluegill
3/4 oz Arkey Jig ~ Jume Bug Bluegill ~ Rattles
This color resembles a bluegill sunfish. It has a multi-color black and purple appearance with superfine red neon and plenty of shiny blue foil and purple foil for flash. Try anything black or try Gary Yamamoto's cinnamon w/purple (color #221) soft plastic baits as trailers with this skirt.
3/4 oz Arkey Jig ~ Peanut Butter Jelly ~ Rattles
PBJ first became popular as a laminate color in soft plastic lures in Southern California many years ago - and practically became forgotten since then. In just the last few years, PBJ has been rediscovered as a jig color. PBJ jigs have spread smoothly across the Southeast and Northeast USA. But PBJ never looked anywhere near this good until now! This peanut butter and jelly sandwich sticks to the roof of bass mouths.
Try Gary Yamamoto's cinnamon w/purple (color #221) or smoke pepper (#150) soft plastic baits as trailers with this skirt.
Brown Purple Skirts. Shown on the next two jigs, brown purple is simply the favorite jig color of many clear water anglers. If you fish clear water, and you're not using brown purple jigs - you should.
3/8 oz Arkey Jig ~ Brown Purple
3/4 oz Arkey Jig ~ Brown Purple
PBJ Flash Skirts. The next jigs all have the Peanut Butter Jelly ("PBJ") Flash skirts. This is a brand new foil-imprinted skirt pattern for 2007. Every strand is heavily embossed with reflective purple foil on both sides. Unfortunately the photos don't reflect well (pun intended) on the shimmering purple foil. The photos don't really show the true shine these skirts emit. In some photos, the golden grains you may see are a residue of the foiling process. Those gold grains wash off during use.
1/4 oz Arkey Jig ~ PBJ Flash
3/8 oz Arkey Jig ~ PBJ Flash
1/2 oz Arkey Jig ~ PBJ Flash
3/4 oz Arkey Jig ~ PBJ Flash
Green Pumpkin Olive Jigs. This skirt color is a special factory run. It has never been made for anyone else nor available anywhere else except at Bassdozer.
It blends 22 strands of dark green pumpkin and 22 strands of olive pumpkin, all heavily barred and spotted with an irregular black print pattern,
1/4 oz Arkey Jig ~ Green Pumpkin Olive
3/8 oz Arkey Jig ~ Green Pumpkin Olive
1/2 oz Arkey Jig ~ Green Pumpkin Olive
Muddler Jigs. These are the same Arkey jigs (same sizes, hooks, etc.) except with a half-length skirt cropped so it puffs out around the jig head like a male lion's mane. It provides half the skirt mass, but has the same heavy duty flat eye flipping hook. So you can use a half-size lure on heavy line. It has become popular with local tournament anglers in some regions in the southeast and south central USA especially. In 2006 when FLW and BASS pros tours made stops in this region, the pros used the local style half-skirt jigs, winning prestigious events on them, and you may have seen these half-skirt jigs shown on televised pro tour events. A half skirt presents a smaller profile jig, and lets one match a smaller soft bait trailer too, like a smallish soft craw, creature or beaver style trailer. With a full skirt, such trailers would tend to get lost in the skirt mass.
3/8 oz Muddler Jig ~ Green Pumpkin Olive
Sunfish Arkey Jigs. Most bass lures are designed to imitate shad, shiners, minnows and crayfish, but make no mistake, sunfish are present everywhere bass are, and they are a staple food in bass diets. You read and hear a whole lot more about shad, shiners, minnows and crayfish, but don't let that fool you. Bass relish sunfish all the time everywhere.
3/8 oz Arkey Jig ~ Green Sunfish
1/2 oz Arkey Jig ~ Green Sunfish
3/4 oz Arkey Jig ~ Green Sunfish
1/4 oz Arkey Jig ~ Warmouth Sunfish
3/8 oz Arkey Jig ~ Warmouth Sunfish
1/2 oz Arkey Jig ~ Warmouth Sunfish
3/4 oz Arkey Jig ~ Warmouth ~ Rattles
Whether you call them warmouth, goggle-eye or red-eyed bream, this small member of the sunfish family is an aggressive feeder. It likes to lurk around brush, rubble and weedy areas in which it can hide, waiting to ambush any prey that comes past. In turn, the warmouth is hunted and preyed upon itself by bass. Bass eat many more sunfish than most anglers realize. It's markings are generally blotched and mottled, with a brassy brownish green back, yellowish olive sides and belly, just like this imitative skirt. Warmouth are widely-found across the country, and this skirt imitates not just warmouth but any and all sunfish species, crayfish and plenty of other critters bass eagerly eat. So don't be afraid to toss a warmouth skirt at any bass anywhere. It's a winner!
Try Gary Yamamoto's smoke root beer w/green & copper (color #236) soft plastic baits as trailers with this skirt.
1/4 oz Arkey Jig ~ Brown Sunfish
3/4 oz Arkey Jig ~ Brown Sunfish ~ Rattles
3/4 oz Arkey Power Jig ~ Brown Sunfish #2
1/2 oz Arkey Power Jig ~ Brown Sunfish #2
3/8 oz Arkey Power Jig ~ Brown Sunfish #2
Brown Sunfish #2 Skirt. Half brown pumpkin with green metal flake. Half dark orange pumpkin with green metal flake. Wholly good! The strand colors in this skirt are not available anywhere else. Only on the lures in Bassdozer's Store. Sunfish are present everywhere bass are, and they are a staple food in bass diets. You read and hear a whole lot more about shad, shiners, minnows and such, but don't let that fool you. Bass eat sunfish all the time everywhere. Top this skirt off with a watermelon pepper soft plastic trailer to complete the sunfish illusion.
Green Monkey Shine Skirt. Most people who see this custom Bassdozer color will never try it. It's their mistake. The green color is kind of a cross between watermelon pepper and chartreuse pepper - and it catches a ton of fish. It has a golden black fish scale accent that you can position on either on the back - or the belly - by turning the skirt. Some people favor the golden black swatch on bottom as opposed to top. Fish will hit the skirt either way. A favorite soft plastic trailer color is clear with silver and gold flakes (Yamamoto's color #168) and also merthiolate (Yamamoto's color #320). There's something about combinations of green and pink that bass like. It is why lures in rainbow trout colors work so well. It has nothing to do with rainbow trout. It's due to the contrast between green and pink combined in a bait. Another great trailer color contrast against the green monkey shine as a backdrop, especially in stained water, is black.
1/4 oz Arkey Jig ~ Green Monkey Shine
3/8 oz Arkey Jig ~ Green Monkey Shine
1/2 oz Arkey Jig ~ Green Monkey Shine
3/4 oz Arkey Jig ~ Black Brown Craw ~ Rattles
3/4 oz Arkey Jig ~ Pale Watermelon Red ~ Rattles
Skirt has forty strands of watermelon with black and red glitter plus a swatch of ten red and black barred belly strands.
This is a hot, hot color in soft plastic baits. It ranks among the top-selling soft plastic colors worldwide. Watermelon red works equally swell as a jig skirt. Although not too many anglers throw watermelon red jigs, they are becoming increasingly popular in recent years because bass just relish them.
Often goes great with a black trailer, or match with Yamamoto's color #208 (watermelon with black and red flake) as a trailer.
3/4 oz Arkey Jig ~ Dark Watermelon Red ~ Rattles
Dark Watermelon Red Pepper Skirts. Infused with plenty of metallic red flake.
Arkey Power jig heads have plenty of metallic red flake too. Stout flipping strength hooks.
1/4 oz Arkey Power Jig ~ Dark Watermelon Red Pepper
3/8 oz Arkey Power Jig ~ Dark Watermelon Red Pepper
1/2 oz Arkey Power Jig ~ Dark Watermelon Red Pepper
3/4 oz Arkey Jig ~ Watermelon Pepper ~ Rattles
One of the top-selling soft plastic lure color in the world is now a great color for jig skirts. This two-tone skirt combines half dark green watermelon pepper plus half pale green watermelon pepper. So now you can use two tones of one of the world's best soft plastic colors at the same time in a jig skirt
1/4 oz Arkey Jig ~ Dark Green Pumpkin ~ Rattles
3/8 oz Arkey Jig ~ Dark Green Pumpkin ~ Rattles
1/2 oz Arkey Jig ~ Dark Green Pumpkin ~ Rattles
3/4 oz Arkey Jig ~ Dark Green Pumpkin ~ Rattles
We don't need to say too much about dark green pumpkin. It's probably already your favorite soft bait color. Now it's a "must-have" in a jig skirt!
1/4 oz Arkey Jig ~ Olive Pumpkin ~ Rattles
3/8 oz Arkey Jig ~ Olive Pumpkin ~ Rattles
1/2 oz Arkey Jig ~ Olive Pumpkin ~ Rattles
3/4 oz Arkey Jig ~ Olive Pumpkin ~ Rattles
1/2 oz Arkey Power Jig ~ Olive Brown Craw
3/8 oz Arkey Power Jig ~ Olive Brown Craw
1/4 oz Arkey Power Jig ~ Olive Brown Craw
Olive Brown Craw Skirt. Brown and green are two great bait colors, especially when sandwiched together like you see here. One half olive pumpkin. One half brown crawdad color. Both halves heavily black peppered with mottled black bars and spots. A truly great natural color skirt. This skirt color is not available anywhere else. Only in Bassdozer's Store.
1/2 oz Arkey Power Jig ~ Black Blue
3/8 oz Arkey Power Jig ~ Black Blue
1/4 oz Arkey Power Jig ~ Black Blue
3/4 oz Arkey Jig ~ Black Blue ~ Rattles
Last but not least is the number one color in flipping jigs. Some manufacturers say black blue is their top-selling soft plastic color too. Black blue can catch as many bass by day as by night, and in clear, stained or dark water. This is not any ordinary black blue skirt. This custom blend of black blue beauty is truly great. The perfect portion of reflective blue foil adds a lifelike shine and shimmering flash. Royal blue tips add the perfect contrasting kick of blue tip color.
Try Yamamoto's various black with blue (color #'s 021, 520, 523, 904) soft plastic baits as trailers with this skirt. There are some times I desire to throw black blue jigs in clear water (such as pre-spawn through post-spawn) and I tend to use Yamamoto's color #214 (smoke with black, blue and gold flake) as a black blue jig trailer color under clearer water conditions.
Flipping Jig Skirt Color Suggestions
Flipping Jig Skirt Color Suggestions
People often think of flipping jigs one way - as imitating crawdads, which jigs do. But they equally imitate sunfish and other panfish like perch or crappie, baby bass and other young-of-year of many fish species, frogs, or anything else that hides in grass and thick cover where you'd flip a jig. Bass eat them all, and these natural skirt colors represent a lot of what bass eat. So it's not just crawdads that a jig looks like.
1/2 oz Flipping Jig ~ Olive Brown Craw Skirt. One half olive pumpkin. One half brown crawdad color. Both halves heavily black peppered with mottled black bars and spots. A truly great natural color skirt. This skirt color is not available anywhere else. Only in Bassdozer's Store.
With two tone skirts, there's no strict rule or requirement to have one or the other half as the back or belly color. True, it seems more natural to present a dark top, light belly. Yet there are days when turning the skirt around 180 degrees may cause fish to hit harder. Who knows why, but if you are getting weak hits or half-hearted bumps on a multi-colored skirted lure, try to turn the skirt colors upside down and see if it doesn't make a difference. It may not look "right" to you, but there are days when this simple trick convinces fish to strike more solidly.
1/2 oz Flipping Jig ~ Green Sunfish Skirt. This is about as good as a skirt gets. Heavily barred, mottled and spotted like sunfish often are, this stunning skirt has a dark green pumpkin pepper back, watermelon pepper sides and orange pumpkin pepper belly. Bassdozer doubts you will find a better green sunfish skirt than this.
This skirt overlays two irregular print patterns - both bars and spots - onto one skirt. It really gives a broken-up and non-descript looking pattern that's more irregular and life-like than the square-looking fish scale patterns. It gives a great mottled crawfish, baitfish or panfish look that breaths fresh new life into popular skirt patterns.
Watermelon Candy Sunfish Skirt. This skirt color homogenizes the four primary colors of most all jigs: 1) black, 2) brown, 3) purple and 4) green in a single skirt. In this way, no matter what jig color a fish may have a hankering for, it's here. It's not one or the other jig color, but all four of them at once! Best of all, the four colors are commingled so closely that they appear as "one cohesive color" instead of four separate ones. This is achieved by very close matching of the green, brown and purple tones in order to infuse into each other like the colors of a watercolor painting bleed into one another. The pervasive black barred and spotted mottling is the "icing on the cake" that binds and meshes the pattern into a cohesive singular theme. So it's not black, brown, green and purple any more. It's the power of all four in one.
1/2 oz Flipping Jig ~ Natural Frog Skirt. Hollow rubber frogs and soft plastic toads have become a recent trend for fishing thick grass the last few years. Hollow frogs are often nudged or bounced along with the rod tip in order to impart some semblance of natural movement. Soft plastic toads are often kept moving, reeled or "buzzed" slowly across the surface of a congested grassy area. Many of these lures are colored to resemble natural frogs and toads - and so is this new frog /toad colored skirt that's perfect for buzzbaits, spinnerbaits and jigs fished around lily pads, grass and frog filled areas. It's Natural Frog. Please enjoy!
1/2 oz Flipping Jig ~ June Bug Bluegill Skirt. This color resembles a bluegill sunfish. It has a black and purple appearance with superfine red neon and plenty of shiny blue foil and purple foil for flash. Goes great in muddy water environments - or anywhere that bluegill exhibit that dark purplish appearance.
Many anglers mistakenly feel flash doesn't matter in dark water, low light or at night. Nothing could be further from the truth. Flash is often attractive in the right proportion, even in the darkest conditions. That's why this skirt is so heavily sparkled with blue and purple glitter.
Black Blue Flash Skirt. New skirt foiling technique for 2007! Each and every one of the 44 strands are heavily foiled in a non-descript, irregular pattern on both sides with metallic blue foil flash.
1/2 oz Flipping Jig ~ Black Blue Flash
A happy customer says: "This beauty was caught on the 1/2 oz black blue flipping jig with a sapphire blue Zoom Super Speed Craw trailer." - John Clinton, Apple Valley, Minnesota
Rain Frog Skirt. This color looks like warm summer rain drops rolling off a green frog's back. That's why it is called "rain frog" and there's really nothing else quite like it. The strands are a nice weedy green color, heavily infused with pearlescent micro-particles that give a ruddy reddish, pinkish, orangey or lustrous coppery sheen to the skirt, depending on the amount and angle of ambient light. The sheen tends to bend the green into a brownish. The sheen tends to come and go, and each strand emits a bit different sheen from the others, causing a constantly changing or shimmering effect. Please enjoy!
1/2 oz Flipping Jig Style T ~ Rain Frog
Green Pumpkin Olive. This skirt color is a special factory run. It has never been made for anyone else nor available anywhere else except at Bassdozer.
It blends 22 strands of dark green pumpkin and 22 strands of olive pumpkin, all heavily barred and spotted with an irregular black print pattern, banded with a black rubber rattle strap. The strap has "mouse ears" to attach two polycarbonate rattle pods.
1/2 oz Flipping Jig ~ Green Pumpkin Olive
1/2 oz Flipping Jig ~ Brown Purple ~ Rattles
Brown Purple Skirt. Winning Western pros have thrown brown purple jig 'n pigs forever. Always have. Always will. Bassdozer's put together a great nondescript, natural-appearing skirt that Western jig wizards will love. There's no finer brown purple skirt on the market. Super drab. Half purplish brown. Half brownish purple. This dark, nondescript skirt can be dressed with a black, brown, purple or watermelon trailer. The two trailer colors Bassdozer himself dresses this skirt with are a dark smoke pepper soft plastic trailer (in clear to stained water) or a dark green pumpkin pepper trailer (under dark conditions). No flash, no fancy, no dinks, just kickers.
1/2 oz Flipping Jig ~ Peanut Butter Jelly ~ Rattles
Peanut Butter Jelly Skirt. PBJ first became popular as a soft plastic lure color in Southern California many years (decades) ago. Practically forgotten since then, PBJ has only recently been rediscovered as a jig color. PBJ jigs have spread smoothly across the Southeast and Northeast USA in the past few seasons, but PBJ still hasn't really caught on in the West again. That's unwise since it's just a variation of the traditional darker brown purple jig that is such a winning bait out West.. Bassdozer's peanut butter and jelly skirt sandwich sticks to the roof of bass mouths. Goes great as a spinnerbait skirt too. It's just a color that bass love.
1/2 oz Flipping Jig ~ PBJ Flash
Peanut Butter Jelly Flash Skirt. A medium brown skirt heavily foiled with lustrous purple metal foil imprinted on both sides. The photo here hardly does this color justice. The purple foil is laminated in an irregular swirling pattern. The purple foil constantly glistens in a fluid manner as the skirt strands ripple whenever moved. The purple flash flutters and practically drips off each strand in a liquid-like shimmering illusion. The photo hardly shows this, but underwater the purple foil shimmers and shines causing the illusion of rippling movement. This is a brand new special order color, and the process and formula to manufacture it has only recently been defined. I don't think you'll find it many places soon. Only here at Bassdozer.
1/2 oz Custom Flipping Jig ~ Green Craw
Green Craw Skirt. An oldie but a goodie, for me. I've caught a lot of fish on this skirt scheme over many years, and I have not offered a skirt with this color yet. It's a color that I am a little excited about to now have for sale for the first time. It's basically two differnet swatches of brownish-greenish strands with heavy green flake throughout. Underwater, the green flake stands out. It has an orange belly swatch, with black fish scale, and that synches the belly to the back which also has black fish scales. The crosshatch back and belly lends a spiny, leggy, carapace shell-like crawdad look to the skirt. And although the color is named "green craw" it certainly looks like a sunfish too.
1/2 oz Flipping Jig ~ Dark Watermelon Red Pepper
1/2 oz Flipping Jig ~ Pale Watermelon Red ~ Rattles
1/2 oz Flipping Jig ~ Watermelon Red Pepper ~ Rattles
1/2 oz Flipping Jig ~ Dark Green Pumpkin
Dark Green Pumpkin Skirt. Extra dark green for duty in low light, at daybreak, in the evening (ideal for those weekday after work tournaments), and at night. Great for dirty water - or clear. Heavily black peppered. It combines two irregular patterns - black bars and spots - to give this skirt a mottled, broken-up, non-descript appearance. A few soft plastic trailer options to go with this skirt are: black, junebug, green pumpkin and more.
1/2 oz Flipping Jig ~ Rusty Green Craw
1/2 oz Flipping Jig ~ Rusty Red Craw ~ Rattles
Rusty Red Craw Skirt. Bassdozer's blend of mottled red and black craw pattern with hints of rusty red brown in it. Goes great with a black trailer in dirty water, but do not be afraid to try it anywhere anytime. Rusty red craw works more often than not.
1/2 oz Flipping Jig ~ Warmouth Sunfish ~ Rattles
Warmouth Sunfish Skirt. Whether you call them warmouth, goggle-eye or red-eyed bream, this small member of the sunfish family is an aggressive feeder. It likes to lurk around brush, rubble and weedy areas in which it can hide, waiting to ambush any prey that comes past. In turn, the warmouth is hunted and preyed upon itself by bass. Bass eat many more sunfish than most anglers realize. It's markings are generally blotched and mottled, with a brassy brownish green back, yellowish olive sides and belly, just like Bassdozer's imitative skirt. Warmouth are widely-found across the country, and this skirt imitates not just warmouth but any and all sunfish species, crayfish and plenty of other critters bass eagerly eat. So don't be afraid to toss Bassdozer's warmouth skirt at any bass anywhere. It's a winner!
1/2 oz Flipping Jig ~ Watermelon Candy
Flipping Jigs Rule!
Flipping Jigs Rule!
People often ask, "What is flipping?"
The definition of flipping includes:
- an eight foot rod you could yank a beached boat off a sand bar with,
- plus a winch to match (I mean reel),
- about 15 feet of rope off the spool (and 5 more on the reel for backing),
- a strong back and biceps.
Oh, yes, you'll also need a flipping jig that won't crumble under that kind of pressure.
Season after season, an analysis of winning techniques shows that flipping jigs remain one of the most winningest baits on top level pro tours like BASS and FLW. It's always been a winner and always will. Who knows why, but big bass favor flipping jigs. It's not just top tour pros either. Right on down the line of any and all regional and local tournament trails, no matter where, the flipping jig is indubitably a winner. If you look at any regional or local tournament dominator, chances are more than good that the flipping jig is the tool used to win time after time.
For many anglers, however, it's a hard lure to use, and you will not catch as many fish. If you do catch five bass (a limit), or if you just need to hang one good kicker to win, the flipping jig catches bigger bass on average than most any other lure. Who knows why, but it does. The flipping jig always has and will be a tournament-winning bait.
This heavy duty Style T flipping jig head works best on heavy tackle. It's shaped especially for getting through grass, weeds and wiry brush. It comes in one size only - 1/2 ounce with a heavy Mustad Ultra Point 5/0 flipping hook.
Around thick grass beds, reed berms, flooded brush banks, lily pads and the like, a streamlined bullet-nosed flipping jig has traditionally been high on an expert angler's options. I say a flipping jig is for an expert angler, because as deceptively simple as a flipping jig appears to be, it is difficult for a neophyte to use one.
One problem is, many anglers underestimate the heaviness of the gear that's required to flip jigs. A good flipping rod, reel and line is one of the heaviest of all outfits required for effective bass fishing. The casual angler doesn't have the gear horsepower required to flip, to get a jig in and out of dense cover and to set the heavy hook despite the stiff deflective fiberguard.
But the right outfit alone doesn't do much itself. You can acquire the very best flipping outfit in the world, however there's still the skill required to cast or flip a jig into barely open spots in the almost impenetrable tangles of thick cover. More often than not, the flip cast had to hit an area no larger than a tea cup - or you're out of luck. Most flipping casts need to be that precise, and many anglers aren't. The best flippers are not born that way but practice in their garage, pool or backyard, some for an hour daily, just flipping a jig into a teacup or coffee can.
An expert flipper must also develop a knack of "preventing snags before they happen" and this skill can be practiced on dry land too. Just cast across an obstacle course that simulates the fishing situations you face. Oh yes, cut the fiberguard off first and run the jig through the obstacle course with the hook point exposed. You'll be a better flipper for it. This knack of "preventing snags before they happen" has very little to do with jig construction. Although a properly-designed jig helps, the knack's 80% operator skill. For anglers that have not mastered the knack of preventing snags before they happen, flipping jigs can be a frustratingly snaggy experience.
Inevitably, even the best flipper will get snagged - in fact, often. This requires another skill. Not only must a flipper be a "master caster" to get into tight spots in the cover that few other anglers can fish, but must be a "master uncaster" also, meaning the knack to unsnag stuck jigs is truly a necessary ability that all flippers must master. If you aren't a "master uncaster" that means you must move the boat to the snag more often than not, to get it out, and you're just not going to catch many fish doing that all day. Being a master uncaster means getting a snag out without compromising your boat's fishing position and without blowing every bass out of the cover.
I hope I haven't discouraged anyone who wants to try flipping jigs. As deceptively simple as jigs look, it is up to the flipper to make them work - or not. It may take years, even a lifetime, to master flipping jigs, but it is the ultimate accomplishment in bass fishing. No other bass lure takes as much skill or practice.
John Clinton of Minnesota is a master at flipping fields of lily pads. "Most anglers just won't get into the thick of the pad fields where lunker bass lurk," says John. "I caught this bucketmouth on the Style T flipping jig with the olive pumpkin skirt and a green pumpkin Zoom Super Speed Craw trailer. The Style T jig has been awesome for fishing shallow vegetation, especially lily pads." - John Clinton, Apple Valley, Minnesota
Flip, Pitch or Swim? You Decide. Up until a couple of years back, fishing jigs around shallow, thick vegetation meant flipping jigs into tiny spots where bass would be holed up deep in cover, and expecting to get hit even before the jig reaches bottom most times. If no hit, shake or hop the jig a couple of times and then extract it from the cover for another cast. If you're so close to the cover you can literally hit the bass on the head without even casting, that's called "flipping" in a nutshell. If you have to pitch an underhanded or semi-sidearm cast a short distance to hit the target, that's called "pitching" a jig.
In the last few years, "swimming" a jig and specific versions of "swimming jigs" have become popular for fishing around thick grass beds also. In this case, the jig is kept swimming along, and the specific swimming jig designs are optimized to do that.
The jig here flips and pitches into holes in grass and gets in and out of tight cover very well. It is also designed it to swim as good as any swimming jig.
This heavy duty flipping jig is designed so it swims as good as it flips. Not one or the other, but both.
So that's what this jig does best of all - both flipping and swimming. Especially in grass, thick weeds, tall reeds, wiry brush banks and fields of lily pads.
Unconventional Jig Eye Bend. Unlike conventional jigs, the 30 degree bend jig hook is what helps make these jigs swim better than a jig with a traditional 60 degree or 90 degree jig hook. The 30 degree hook placement and the curve of the chin underneath it help bring the jig though grass better than other jigs, plus the collar (where the skirt goes) is much lower below the jig's center of gravity, which helps steer the eye over and through grass, helps the point stick on a strike and helps counterbalance the jig to stay upright when swimming. I've seen many ill-balanced flipping jigs that roll over on their sides when you try to swim them, and I've seen many swimming jigs just too light to flip - but the Style T jig swims and flips in grass better than most other flipping jigs out there, and it swims better than most other swimming jigs out there today.
Premium Mustad Opti-Angle Ultra Point jig hook. This is one of Mustad's newest - and best - jig hook models. New hook models like this have a habit of leapfrogging over old hook models. Let's face it, you can't upgrade an old hook model since they are many existing molds and lure manufacturers worldwide depending on hook models to remain consistent. But you can learn what makes a jig hook better, and incorporate those ideas into a new hook model, which is what Mustad did with this hook. Every dimension is better than most any flipping jig hook built before it. The total length from the eye to the bend is longer than any flipping jig hook I know. Just like long shank hooks have become preferred on spinnerbaits, this new longer jig hook also puts the hook point back further into the mouth when engulfed - and also puts the hook point further back to hook more short-striking fish. The top of the hook eye is much lower than the point, thus less impediment caused by protruding hook eye blockage on the hookset. The "front length" (distance from the tip of the point to back of the bend) is longer, for more cant and leverage on the hookset. From the tip of the point to the barb is longer, for more tentative hold upon initial penetration. The bend is wider, the gape is wider and the bite or throat is deeper. As I say, every dimension is designed better than most any flipping jig hook built before it. New hooks designs tend to be like that. It has a heavy flipping strength hook wire for landing big bass with medium/heavy to very heavy tackle. It is a 5/0 hook with a black nickel finish and an Opti-Angle Ultra Point designed to resist the point bending and rolling over when it meets gristly mouth material.
Triple Cone Cut Keeper Collar. This is something you do not see much yet on bass lures. The Style T jig here is just about the first to implement it (on bass jigs). It is designed to hold a skirt (over the first cone) and the remaining two cones can hold a soft trailer securely. To get a skirt or soft bait onto the cones, it's best to wet the collar a little first. Lake water or any water will do. At home, I like to use a Q-Tip dipped in water and dishwashing liquid. Just dab the cones to wet them, then wriggle the skirt or soft bait gently side to side to get it seated properly on the cones. If you try it dry or apply too much direct force straight ahead, it's not as easy and results will be less than perfect. Wet the cones, and wriggle side to side gently, and your skirt and/or soft bait will enjoy the benefit of 360 degree all-around grip from each of the three cones. All together, that's 1,080 degrees of gripping power. Much better than a puny barb or bent wire keeper!
The triple cone cut keeper collar is a significant advantage. First, there is one keeper cone for the skirt, and it is quite difficult for a fish to ever pull the skirt down. Second, there are two more cone keepers with a full 360 degrees of gripping power each (a total of 720 degrees of grip strength) that helps hold a soft plastic trailer far more securely than any spike or barb type keeper. Do the math. A spike or barb type keeper has at most 15 degrees of grip whereas the Style T jig has 720 degrees of grip. It's obvious the Style T will hold soft baits much more securely. Worst of all, most other flipping or swimming jigs on the market have absolutely no way to hold soft plastic trailers - just a bare hook shank behind the skirt! The Style T has not one but two full 360 degree trailer keeper cones!
Closely Calibrated Fiberguard. The fiberguard is painstakingly calibrated to need no trimming. It wasn't so many years ago, there was practically only one size fiberguard, and it came the maximum length, very thick and very stiff, sort of a "one size fits all" which often meant that savvy anglers would need to trim, shorten and thin out some fibers to tailor the fiberguard to be just right for the snags they faced. Worst of all, less experienced anglers would use the fiberguard as is, and have problems hooking fish. No wonder novices would say jig fishing is hard to master. Remember, a fiberguard is only there to let the jig traverse terrain that an exposed hook can not. Nowadays, a manufacturer can practically custom order the length, stiffness, fiber diameter and number of fibers in a bundle that they desire. So we perfectly configured the fiberguard on the Style T jig so it does not need trimming. It's good to go right out of the box, and hooks a high percentage of fish while avoiding snags. Even inexperienced anglers will hook a lot of fish - and remarkably avoid snags like they're experts! You do want to fan the fibers out, just a little bit on both sides, to serve as side deflectors to usher the hook away from grass and snags from the sides. But you do not need to trim it. It is set up for grass and weeds and brush, and that's why the fiberguard is a little longer which helps the jig get through grass. However, if you fish relatively snag-free areas, you may want to clip 1/4" off the tip of the fiberguard. This is just to lower the protruding tip of the fiberguard, so it reduces any chance it's an impediment when a fish engulfs it.
Power Fishing's Perfect Pair
This the matching jig built to be used with Bassdozer's Style T spinnerbait. The Style T spinnerbait comes in two sizes only 1/2 oz and 3/4 ounce with a 5/0.
Both this jig and the Style T spinnerbait were built together in order to be fished together. These two are like peas and carrots - the perfect pair for heavy tackle.
How it works is when you power fish down a bank, you can use this jig to flip, pitch and swim this jig right in the thick grass, the heavy cover and tight spots.
With a second rod on the deck, you can throw the Style T spinnerbait to the outside edges and ends of grass lines and the open water stretches in between thick cover patches. As you come across points or bowls you don't necessarily want to bring the boat into, you can still fish them with long casts with the heavy spinnerbait. You can get up close and in tight with the jig, and also cast across more open water, get a little more distance with the spinnerbait.
These two are the same h-ea-v-y d-u-t-y power fishing lure design built as a jig and as the matching Style T spinnerbait.
Same heavy duty bait designed to probe tight cover (jig) and to prospect open structure (spinnerbait).
The hook used is one of the latest flipping jig hook styles to be introduced to the market (last year). As a rule, all new hooks tend to leapfrog past earlier hook models. New hooks incorporate new understanding by the hookmaker of how anglers use them, more modern production methods and materials.
This is a modern hook made to withstand the force of superlines (braid), but works equally swell with monofilament or fluorocarbon. That doesn't mean it will never bend under tremendous pressure of heavier braided lines, but it is designed to bend less than most other flipping hooks do. No matter how strong a heavy duty flipping hook looks and feels, most all can and will bend under intense pressure with heavy braid.
The Mustad "Ultra Point" is also revolutionary for flipping jigs. Mustad came out with it a few years back. It is super-sharp right out of the box, but where it excels most is after a few fish are caught or after you've been flipping a few hours or all day. The tip of the point rarely bends. The Mustad Ultra Point holds its point better under hard flipping conditions and doesn't roll the point after a few fish or flipping tough stuff all day.
Best of all, the huge hook gap can accommodate big trailers and still have enough hook gap left to hook and land fish well. The huge hook gap assures your hookset will take, even if at the end of a long flip or pitch. And it was designed for long distance casting-and-swimming as well as it flips and pitches.
This jig comes through grass weedless and snagless, better than any flipping jig I know. Try it and see for yourself. At the same time, it is designed to momentarily clutch grass. I love the way it grabs but let's go of grass. There's something fish find perfect about that at times. We often hear how fishing lipless rattling crankbaits (or any lure) in grass, how it's good to rip it off grass to get a strike. Well, this jig does that - briefly - so fast it is hardly noticeable. It acts more like an aquatic terrestrial creature, an amphibian, waterbug, larvae or crawdad that moves from stalk to stalk, briefly clutching on and pushing off to the next stalk. Once you know about this unique grab-and-go action, you'll find yourself intentionally fishing this jig to bring that action out of it.
 Watermelon Red |
 Black |
 Green Pumpkin |
 Watermelon Candy |
 Brown |
 Black Brown Craw |
 Brown Purple |
 Brown Sunfish |
 Brown Pumpkin |
 Black Blue |
 June Bug Bluegill |
Wisconsin Style Swimming Jig Heads
Wisconsin Style Swimming Jig Heads
You may have seen Wisconsin style swimming jigs before... just never like these!
These are "Wisconsin Style" swimming jigs with a 5/0 Mustad Ultra Point jig hook.
These swimming jig heads can be used with skirts plus single or double tail grub trailers - or simply dress with grubs without silicone skirts - or with small soft plastic shad bodies such as Gary Yamamoto's 3-1/2" Swimbait.
Swimming Jig Heads. Top View.
Swimming Jig Heads. Bottom View.
Mustad Ultra Point 5/0 Hook. Both 1/4 and 3/8 oz sizes feature the same 5/0 size medium wire diameter Mustad Ultra Point hook.
Both the 1/4 and 3/8 oz size swimming jig heads have the same 5/0 Mustad Ultra Point medium wire diameter hook. This is a strong hook for use with light to medium spinning or baitcasting gear, say anything from 8 up to a max of 16 pound test line. The fiberguard is firm enough to deflect the swimming jig away from weeds and snags, yet fish will practically hook themselves with little interference from this perfect size brush guard.
 1/4 oz Swimming Jig ~ Gold Shiner |
 3/8 oz Swimming Jig ~ Gold Shiner |
 1/4 oz Swimming Jig ~ Green Pumpkin |
 3/8 oz Swimming Jig ~ Green Pumpkin |
 1/4 oz Swimming Jig ~ White Shad |
 3/8 oz Swimming Jig ~ White Shad |
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Black Mist Color. Both the black mist and the brown mist colors are beautifully finished with a fine mist of purple pearl sprayed from the tip of the nose to in between the eyes. A fine mist of pearl green is sprayed on the lower cheeks of both gill flaps. The photos hardly show the real beauty of the purple and green mist sprays.
Green Pumpkin Color.
Gold Shiner Color. 3/8th swimming jig head on left. 1/4 oz on right.
White Shad Color. 1/4 oz swimming jig head on left. 3/8th on right.
Black. 3/8th swimming jig head on left. 1/4 oz on right.
Wisconsin Style Swimming Jigs ~ Skirt Color Suggestions
Wisconsin Style Swimming Jigs ~ Skirt Color Suggestions
1/4 oz Swimming Jig ~ White Shad
3/8 oz Swimming Jig ~ White Shad
1/4 oz Swimming Jig ~ Ghost Minnow
3/8 oz Swimming Jig ~ Ghost Minnow
1/4 oz Swimming Jig ~ Threadfin Flash
3/8 oz Swimming Jig ~ Threadfin Flash
Over the summer of 2004, I worked on developing a specific threadfin shad color concept for a Senko, which ultimately went into production as color #927 (smoke with large purple and small hologram back / white pearl with large silver belly). My, how time flies! That was a full two years ago, and the last laminate Senko put into production since that time.
Now threadfin shad are hard buggers to mimic since their colors change constantly, from season to season, and even at different times of day or depths, their skin cells or pigment cells (or whatever) flush differently. Seasonally, I've seen shad schools appear green as a watermelon Senko, blue as the sky, black as night and every other hue.
However, the smoky fuchsia (pinkish purplish), silvery and white pattern of Senko color #927 is a fairly common color expression of shad, especially in colder or deeper water - or when they're not expressing any seasonal or specific environmental color coordination.
Recently, I've tried to express that same desirable threadfin color concept - smoky fuchsia, silver and white - in a spinnerbait and jig skirt. Here is the new skirt color I call "Threadfin Flash.
The flash material only looks silver in the photo. The camera (or me, the photographer) just was not able to capture the holographic effect of the flash material. The flash material constantly reflects pale aqua blue, chartreuse, pale pink, pale purple, pale green, gold glints and other reflective hues. I put the flash material on the back (not the belly), where it would get hit by the most light.
Swimming Jig ~ 1/4 oz ~ Gold Shiner
Swimming Jig ~ 3/8 oz ~ Gold Shiner
Swimming Jig ~ 1/4 oz ~ Pearl Blue White
Swimming Jig ~ 3/8 oz ~ Pearl Blue White
Pale Blue White Skirt. I've always fished with a pale blue white color of one kind or another. I rely on pale blue white as an alternative to plain white. Over the years, I feel those are two of the best shad colors - white and pale blue white. This skirt is my latest version. I've experimented with several different pale blue white patterns, but the recipe always involves adding glints of pale icy blue to a white skirt.
For some reason it seems smallmouth especially favor pale blue white shad baits. And here's a little tip to tuck away for those vexing times when striped bass become problematic by hitting pure white jigs way too often. Switch to a pale blue jig like, and you'll find many of the striper hits drop off, without affecting the largemouth, smallmouth or spotted bass bite.
1/4 oz Swimming Jig ~ Pale Blue Shad
As good as these skirts look, skirts alone don't work well on a jig without a soft plastic grub trailer. Rigging a grub trailer, it is important to hit the mold seam line where you poke the hook out, and the sickle-shaped grub tail should always point down on a jig. When rigged, the grub should lie perfectly straight on the hook. I like three models of Gary Yamamoto's five-inch single tail grub trailers for pale blue white jigs: Pearl Blue w/ Silver (#18-10-031); Daiquiri w/ Black & Hologram (#18-10-237); and Blue Pearl w/Black & Hologram (#18-10-239).
3/8 oz Swimming Jig ~ Pale Blue Shad
3/8 oz Swimming Jig ~ Summer Shad
1/4 oz Swimming Jig ~ Baby Bass
3/8 oz Swimming Jig ~ Baby Bass
Black Blue Flash Skirt. New skirt foiling technique for 2007! Each and every one of the 44 strands are heavily foiled in a non-descript, irregular pattern on both sides with metallic blue foil flash.
Rattles are often used on flipping jigs, yet rarely used on the swimming jigs shown below. Nevertheless, all skirt bands have two sockets to accept two industry standard rattle pods. Rattles not included. Rattle pods sold separately in Bassdozer's Store. Better yet, try the easy on/easy off rattle nunchakus also sold in Bassdozer's Store. The nunchakus have more action, more noise and they move out of the way when a fish hits. Thank you.
1/4 oz Swimming Jig ~ Black Blue Flash
3/8 oz Swimming Jig ~ Black Blue Flash
PBJ Flash Skirts. The next jigs all have the Peanut Butter Jelly ("PBJ") Flash skirts. This is a brand new foil-imprinted skirt pattern for 2007. Every strand is heavily embossed with reflective purple foil on both sides. Unfortunately the photos don't reflect well (pun intended) on the shimmering purple foil. The photos don't really show the true shine these skirts emit. In some photos, the golden grains you may see are a residue of the foiling process. Those gold grains wash off during use.
1/4 oz Swimming Jig ~ PBJ Flash
3/8 oz Swimming Jig ~ PBJ Flash
3/8 oz Swimming Jig ~ Natural Frog
1/4 oz Swimming Jig ~ Natural Frog
Natural Frog Skirts. Did we save the best for last today? I think so, meaning Bassdozer's new natural frog skirt is a great creation! You should do exceptionally well with these natural frog swimming jigs around dense weeds or in stained water. Fish like to key off that flash of yellow belly in thick weeds. Anywhere that their visibility is partially blocked by dense weeds, that flash of chartreuse belly is a killer for fish to get a partially blocked glimpse of it. Ditto in stained water.
1/4 oz Swimming Jig ~ Brown Sunfish
3/8 oz Swimming Jig ~ Brown Sunfish
1/4 oz Swimming Jig ~ Brown Sunfish #2
3/8 oz Swimming Jig ~ Brown Sunfish #2
Mottled Brown Skirt. Sometimes subtle is best, and plebian brown is arguably best especially for smallmouth (coincidentally called "brown bass"). Just like smallies themselves are brown to blend into their environments, this smoky charcoal brown skirt is medium dark and non-descript with a natural looking appearance. Think of the places smallmouth favor, points, ledges, gravel, other open water structure, often away from weeds, and those are the types of places to toss this jig color. Heavily black peppered. It combines two irregular patterns - black bars and spots - to give this skirt a mottled, broken-up, non-descript appearance.
A good idea (often necessary) with any skirted jig is to add a soft plastic trailer bait (not included) to maximize effectiveness. One example of a good trailer for this jig is Gary Yamamoto Custom Baits single tail grub. The 5 inch size is ideal.
For this jig, an example of a good trailer is Yamamoto's #18-10-194 (Watermelon Pepper) or #18-10-150 (Smoke Pepper) single tail grub. However, soft plastic trailer options to go with this skirt really are anything black, brown, watermelon, green pumpkin, purple, chartreuse or even white.
1/4 oz Swimming Jig ~ Mottled Brown
3/8 oz Swimming Jig ~ Mottled Brown
Green pumpkin and watermelon pepper are the two top soft plastic lure color in the world, and both make great jig skirts. A rule of thumb is to try dark green pumpkin given darker conditions. Try watermelon under bright skies and in clear water. However, a lot of anglers simply try both these colors no matter what in order to see if one seems better than the other at any given moment.
Dark Green Pumpkin Skirt. Extra dark green for duty in low light, at daybreak, in the evening (ideal for those weekday after work tournaments), and at night. Great for dirty water - or clear. Heavily black peppered. It combines two irregular patterns - black bars and spots - to give this skirt a mottled, broken-up, non-descript appearance. A few soft plastic trailer options to go with this skirt are: black, junebug, green pumpkin and more.
1/4 oz Swimming Jig ~ Dark Green Pumpkin
3/8 oz Swimming Jig ~ Dark Green Pumpkin
3/8 oz Swimming Jig ~ Green Pumpkin Blend
Watermelon Two-Tone Skirt. Half dark green watermelon pepper on top. Half pale watermelon pepper on bottom. Heavily black peppered. It combines two irregular patterns - black bars and spots - to give this skirt a mottled, broken-up, non-descript appearance. A few soft plastic trailer options to go with this skirt are: watermelon pepper, green pumpkin, brown pumpkin and more.
1/4 oz Swimming Jig ~ Watermelon Two-Tone
3/8 oz Swimming Jig ~ Watermelon Two-Tone
Green Pumpkin Olive. This skirt color is a special factory run. It has never been made for anyone else nor available anywhere else except at Bassdozer.
It blends 22 strands of dark green pumpkin and 22 strands of olive pumpkin, all heavily barred and spotted with an irregular black print pattern, banded with a black rubber rattle strap. The strap has "mouse ears" to attach two polycarbonate rattle pods. Each pod with three steel ball rattles inside. (Note: Rattle pods NOT included. Rattle pods sold separately).
3/8 oz Swimming Jig ~ Green Pumpkin Olive
1/4 oz Swimming Jig ~ Green Pumpkin Olive
Swimming Jig ~ 1/4 oz ~ Green Pumpkin Olive
Swimming Jig ~ 3/8 oz ~ Green Pumpkin Olive
Olive Pumpkin Skirt. An exclusive Bassdozer color. You won't see it anywhere else. Heavily black peppered. It combines two irregular patterns - black bars and spots - to give this skirt a mottled, broken-up, non-descript appearance. Almost any soft plastic trailer options go swell with this skirt: black, white, assorted purples, browns, greens and more.
1/4 oz Swimming Jig ~ Olive Pumpkin
3/8 oz Swimming Jig ~ Olive Pumpkin
1/4 oz Swimming Jig ~ Dark Watermelon Red
3/8 oz Swimming Jig ~ Dark Watermelon Red
Swimming Jig ~ 1/4 oz ~ Dark Watermelon Red
Trailers a Must. It's necessary to use a trailer such as these Gary Yamamoto single tail grubs with a swimming jig. Several sizes of Yamamoto grubs are shown, but the one in the center is most often used. It's the 5-inch 18-series model grub. The smoke silver (color #177) and pearl blue silver (color #031) work with white, shad or baitfish pattern skirts. The smoke pepper (color #150) works with a range of darker black, brown and green skirts. Don't hesitate to match a watermelon red pepper grub (#208) with the dark watermelon red skirt. A green pumpkin (color #297) grub goes great with the green pumpkin olive skirt. Try a clear with gold and silver trailer (color #168) with the gold shiner skirt. Have fun experimenting with matching trailer colors to skirt colors. Chances are fish will bite a wide variety of skirt and trailer color combos. Bottom line, you will catch many more fish with a trailer (any color) than without a trailer.
Swimming Football Jigs
Swimming Football Jigs
There's a renaissance of renewed interest in jig fishing the past few seasons. It's in large part due to top BASS and FLW pros who have been throwing more and different jigs than ever before. I'm not really talking about your father's flipping jigs either.
There's a funny scene in the movie titled Forest Gump where the character Bubba is reciting to Gump all the different ways that shrimp may be served. The list seems to never end is the funny part. Likewise with jigs, there are endless ways to present jigs to fish - flipping jigs, Arkey jigs, finesse jigs, tube jigs, shakey jigs, wacky jigs, stand up jigs, darter jigs, jig'n worms, jig n' grubs, jig heads for swimbaits, jigs with spinners under their chins, Slider jigs, float'n fly jigs, hair jigs, bulky softball jigs and on and on.
Two jig styles that pros have been using more often in recent years are: 1) swimming jigs and 2) football jigs. Many (not all) of the pros have really only started using these jig styles recently, but are doing swell with them, and their successes have not gone unnoticed by the ranks of avid bass anglers worldwide.
Swimming Jigs. One pro angler in particular, Tom Monsoor from Wisconsin has dominated the north central regional tournaments whenever he fished them with his swimming jigs over the past decade. Some sources cite Monsoor tallied 100 wins with swimming jigs in regional events. When Monsoor stepped up to the national pro tour in 2004, he took his Wisconsin swimming jigs with him. Monsoor stuck several top finishes in quick order with his swimming jigs. That caused a panic and herd reaction among other top BASS and FLW pros who rushed to add swimming jigs to their bag of tricks. Indeed, pros that tried swimming jigs (which were fairly new to many of them) did quite well in top events at that time.
Today, nation-wide swimming jig fever has cooled down. As Monsoor's win streak tailed off, swimming jig popularity ebbed also. It probably peaked about two years back (in 2004-2005). Nevertheless, swimming jigs for bass are here to stay, and it is fair to say it really wasn't done much before Monsoor.
Football Jigs. Another region, the far West is the cradle of football jig fishing. I don't know who or how it first started, but the deep clear canyon lakes of Arizona, Utah, Nevada, New Mexico and Southern California are considered the domain where heavy football jigging flourished for bass fishing.
For instance, back in 1995, top pro Gary Yamamoto won the West's biggest event - the US Open in Las Vegas - with a one ounce football jig, a technique largely unknown to pros outside the far West until recently.
In just the last couple seasons on the top BASS and FLW tours, the football jig has become an "overnight success" as one of the winning-est tactics today. Part of the reason is, tour schedule timing has shiftted the past couple seasons to include more post-spawn dates when fish drift deeper after the spring. Another part of the reason is pros overall are turning more and more to deepwater methods throughout the season (not just during post-spawn events) and they're discovering the heavy football jig is one of the best deepwater lures.
Will the current popularity of the football jig only last a season or two like so many other hot tactics that spurt then wither? Will intense interest in the football jig wane like with the swimming jig? It's too early to say. Right now the football jig is hot, at least until the next hot thing supersedes it.
But one thing's for sure, neither the Western style football jig nor the Wisconsin style swimming jig will ever slip back into being a regional tactic anymore. Both swimming jigs and football jigs work too well and anglers everywhere know about them now. So they're here to stay.
Swimming Football Jigs. One thing you hardly ever hear about (and I've even read articles that say it won't work) is swimming football jigs. Football jigs are supposed to be bottom-bounced or dragged across bottom in deep water. Swimming jigs are supposed to be kept moving up near the surface in thick, shallow vegetation.
Honestly, swimming football jigs is fairly simple and effective. It combines 1/2, 3/4 or 1 ounce football jigs with baitfish-colored skirts and grub tail trailers used with a swimming (as opposed to bottom-bouncing) retrieve. Another "melding" of these techniques you may say are that these football jigs don't have a heavy wire flipping caliber hook. They have a medium (yet still strong) hook that helps set the hook with a swimming retrieve. For whatever reason, a swimming jig retrieve works best with a long cast. Some say in shallow grassy areas, the long cast with a swimming jig is needed not to alert fish to the angler's presence. But there's more to it than that because the long cast also gets more strikes in deep water swimming football jigs. Who knows why but it's true that a long cast is best when swimming jigs.
Another helpful feature for swimming jigs is these footballs don't have the thick, super-stiff brushguards often found on football jigs. Again, the brushguard used here helps fish hook themselves when they hit these football jigs on the end of a long distance cast.
No, these are not finesse jigs - nor are they flipping jigs. For instance, the gear I favor for them is either a Falcon Expert EC-7-MH rod (for the 1/2 oz size) and a Falcon Expert EC-7-H for the 3/4 and 1 ounce swimming football jigs. Both rods I use 16 pound test Yamamoto Sugoi gray fluorocarbon line with Shimano Chronarch 200 reels. So that's certainly not finesse fishing, but the medium/heavy hook wire and fiberguard are excellent in swimming jig situations with medium/heavy (as opposed to flipping) strength gear.
Swim'n Football pile-up! 4 each of 1/2, 3/4 and 1 ounce sizes. Same 5/0 hook in all.
1 oz Swim'n Football Jigs. 2 each Threadfin Flash. 2 each Smallie Special.
3/4 oz Swim'n Football Jigs. 2 each Autumn Green. 2 each Chartreuse Shad.
1/2 oz Swim'n Football Jigs. 2 each Spot Special. 2 each Pearl Blue Chartreuse.
Swim'n Football Grubs. Just like a coin has a head and a tail, so too must a jig head always have a tail or trailer. Shown above are Gary Yamamoto Custom Baits 2-series 6" grub tails in color 031 (top); 2-series grub in color 177 (second); 18T-series grub in color 031 (third); and 19T-series grub in color 150.
1/2 oz Football Jig ~ Chartreuse Shad ~ 18T-031 Yamamoto Grub Tail
3/4 oz Football Jig ~ Autumn Green ~ 2-031 Yamamoto Grub Tail
1 oz Football Jig ~ Threadfin Flash ~ 19T-150 Yamamoto Grub Tail
There are a lot of fancy fishing lures available for bass anglers today. If the truth be known, all the fancy stuff probably does not do any better at bagging bass than these humble baitfish pattern jigs.
Swimming a baitfish pattern jig is a different presentation and gets a different reaction from fish compared to slowly bouncing the bottom with a black blue or brown purple or dark color jig. The swimming football jig is a faster, flashier style of jig fishing. Why not give these swimming football jigs a try today? You'll be glad you did.
Tips for the Swimming Football Technique. It is a misconception that football jigs need to be used RIGHT ON THE VERY BOTTOM. I've even come across articles claiming you can't swim football jigs, but that's not true. Yes, these football jigs can be swam in very close proximity to the bottom, but the best approach is so the jigs rarely touch bottom except when YOU momentarily pause of purposely mend slack line to the jig that allows the jig to sink to seek the bottom in order so you may adjust the depth ABOVE BOTTOM at which you are making your swimming presentation. Otherwise, you really don't need to hit bottom at all, except to stop and let the jig touch down every so often to make sure you are near but not on the bottom. This is the case when you are retrieving down a downhill bottom contour. You will occasionally need to pause to let the jig sink to hunker close to the bottom. But once it touches down, start swimming it again.
On an uphill bottom contour, you'll need to do the opposite. Quicken the retrieve until the football jig can no longer be felt bouncing the bottom. One way to help visualize this is to consider the football jig is like a jet plane taking off on a runway. You want the jig to get airborne (start swimming) and you need to accelerate the retrieve enough so that the jig takes off from bottom. Unlike the jet plane however, you want the jig to ideally hover close to bottom - with minimal subsequent touch-offs just to make sure the jig hasn't risen too high. You want to be off bottom but tracking close to it.
What happens when you are swimming along and there's a sudden rise or obstacle such as a bush, a boulder, a ridge shelf jutting up higher than the rest of the terrain is that the swimming football jig will begin to clutch, bounce off and stutter over and through the object. As the football jig bulldozes its way through and past the object, it will start to get that "floating feeling" as it starts to swim smoothly again. That instant when it clears the obstruction as the grabby, snaggy feel turns into a floating swim feel is a high percentage strike point. As the jig bumbles through and pulls clear of whatever's down there, expect it to get belted hard.
One other tip, if the water you fish has current or flow, the football jig excels when cast cross current and allowed to dead drift down current. Actually, cast slightly upcurrent, starting at a 45 degree angle upcurrent (depending on current speed and depth). The current sweeps the jig back down at you. The jig will sink down and start rolling and dragging along bottom if you don't do anything. If you start reeling in just a little line, the jig will perk up and start methodically bouncing bottom instead of rolling or dragging. If you increase the pace to wind in just a little more line, the jig will reluctantly start to "take off" from the "runway" and become temporarily "airborne." Like a plane that may be overloaded too much and cannot make it off the runway - gravity will return the jig to bottom occasionally until it is perpendicular to you (directly in front of you) in the current when water flow pressure neutralizes and overrides gravity's force, your jig should float away from bottom! That is often the moment when the connection is made between fisherman and fish, when the jig is no longer bouncing bottom, but floating freely above it buffeted by the swirling of the current. The jig is fairly neutral for an instant there, like an astronaut in a weightless environment! What happens next instant is the jig switches to being downcurrent from you. Immediately the jig does an about-face 180 turn and starts rising in the current. This sudden rise is a strike trigger. You can't really do it with the rod tip or with reel and line manipulation. It is only the current and the dead drifting tactic that makes these strike trigger moments possible. If there is any fish-holding boulder, hump, wood jam or whatever may hold fish, you really want to orchestrate the instant of the 180 turn-around and rise to happen right there.
So, if you are going to be fishing current a bottom-bouncing approach like this is a good choice for these football jigs for clean (weed-free) sand, shellfish and rock bottoms, channels or whatever (except weedy bottoms). You will need some current flow from mild to strong, which can be matched with the 1/2, 3/4 and 1 oz weights depending on current flow. But keep in mind, you will rarely catch any fish on the bottom-bouncing part when the jig is coming down current. That's only the part used to set up and prepare for the free float when it gets directly in front of you, the turn-around and rise. Nor will you get many strikes once the jig drifts past that point and falls down current from you.
Pro Football Jig Heads for Bass Fishing
Pro Football Jig Heads
This jig head is known by the name of the "pro football" head. It is very popular - probably the most common football head on the market. It appears in a lot of places. The same one appears under several brand names, and in in different vendors' packaging with or without skirts, and also at mail order component catalogs like Jann's, Barlow's and Stamina.
The manufacturer who molds and paints them has some flexibility to use different hook styles or sizes in the same mold. Almost always, when you see this football head on the shelf or in a catalog, it almost always has an oddly-angled jig hook. This odd-angled hook is sometimes called a "Big Bite" bend I think. This angled-in hook shape is very good for Texas-rigging soft plastics where you tex-skin the hook under the worm's (or whatever soft bait's) skin. On a jig however, where you are not burying the jig hook in a soft bait, I never really liked these odd-angled hooks on jigs myself. Still, many highly-successful anglers use these same football jigs with the oddly-angled jig hooks - and they score very well. So that brings up an important point - a lot of good anglers favor a lot of different football jigs. I guess it's the same with everything, different brands and styles appeal to different people who feel they all work swell for them.
My preference, I use the standard round bend jig hook - not the oddly-angled jig hook on these pro football heads in my store. I like to have the consistent hooking experience I am used to when a jig has the standard round bend hook in it. That works swell for me.
So that's one difference that I really like between the pro football jigs in my store - and others sold elsewhere that have an oddly-angled hook.
Pro Football Jig. On the top pro tours the past two years, a paradigm shift has started in the baits used and spots fished by top pros in prestigious televised tournaments. Top pros are increasingly learning to probe deeper offshore spots for untapped bass. The pros are discovering new lures to them (like football jigs) will win deep tournaments. Consequently, the football jig has grown in popularity among local tournament and recreational anglers who pick up new techniques and tactics from the pros on TV and in magazine articles.
The specific football head shown here is one of the most popular football jigs on the market. This same football jig has been on the market for years. If it looks like your favorite brand of football jig, it may have come out of the same series of molds. This same jig (and slight brand variations of it) sells under a variety of different brand names which are made in the same factory. As the molds that make the football jig become worn out by normal usage, new molds are made to replace the worn molds. When a new mold is made, it is also an opportunity to make changes to the football jig shape, upgrades to the jig collar and trailer keeper collar are made, and the fiberguard has changed dimensions over the years as better (thinner) fiberguard options became available. No trimming is required. So many aspects of this football jig shape have been refined over a number of years, making it one of the best and most popular football jigs today.
For 2007, the round bend wide gap Mustad Ultra Point hook you see here is new. In prior years, the hook used in this football had a sharply angled bend (like a Sproat or O'Shaughnessy bend). For 2007, the new wide gap, round bend forged hook you see here consistently hooks and holds fish better. This new round bend hook is a step up from the hook formerly used in this jig in prior years.
Available weight and hook sizes: (1/4 oz 3/0); (3/8 oz 4/0); (1/2 oz 5/0); (3/4 oz 5/0); (1 oz 5/0).
The 1/4, 3/8 and 1/2 ounce sizes are great to use in rock bottom areas because the oblong head shape helps keep the jig head perched atop bottom rubble without slipping and sliding down deep into small cracks and openings amidst the debris.
More streamlined jig heads (most all other jig head shapes) will snag more on such rocky bottom types than will the football jig. Even if a football jig does get lodged in a snag, it will not lodge as deeply, and can be unsnagged more easily than other jigs, especially if you are able to backpedal to get right over the snagged jig in order to get it out the same way or same angle that it went in.
Many other jig heads will roll on their sides, putting the hook right on the bottom. Due to its oblong sideways head however, a football jig really cannot roll over. A football jig tends to keep the hook straight up most of the time, and it is hard to envision the hook snagging when it's upright. A hook tends to snag when it's rolled into the bottom or when the hook's rolled into a limb - but the football head tends not to roll over as much as other jigs.
Where football heads really come into their own, however, is with the heavy 3/4 and 1 ounce sizes. The heavy heads really define what football jig fishing is. The heavyweight heads separate football jigging from all other types of jig tactics. The 3/4 and 1 ounce jigs have a big presence, they displace a lot of water and create a disturbance that doesn't go unnoticed by deep bass. They sink fast. They hit the bottom and hit any underwater obstacles hard, causing a fast-snapping reaction bite at times. Think of an apple tree. If a light leaf fell off the top of the apple tree and fluttered silently to the ground, you would hardly pay attention. You might not even notice at all. If a ponderous apple fell off the tree top and smashed the ground hard, you are very likely to turn your head to see what just happened there. That's why a heavy football jig works so well. It gets attention plummeting down and thudding the bottom hard, and when fish turn their heads to see what's happening, your football jig is on the scene, appearing edible or alive.
Many anglers pigeonhole the football jig as a crawdad imitation. Yet the football jig isn't exactly a true copy of a crawdad - or anything else. A bass may not know what a football jig represents, except that as the football bangs the bottom and crashes head-on into bottom debris - even when it just lays there immobile - it appears like something that is not a perfect, healthy specimen, therefore an easier meal to catch than a perfectly healthy craw or minnow.
So the football jig imitates nothing in particular and everything in general. Depending on the color of the jig head, the color and kind of dressing you apply (you may dress it with a silicone skirt plus any kind of soft plastic or pork trailer - or just use soft baits like hula grubs, creatures, beavers or craws alone without skirts) and depending on the action that an angler uses, a football can give fish the impression of a craw, a panfish, a shad, a young-of-year walleye, trout, etc. So when you know that bass are feeding heavily on one particular kind of food source, it can help to try to match the hatch. For example, when bass are feeding heavily on shad, it can help to use a silver jig head, with a silvery white dressing (skirt and/or soft bait). Yet above all, a football jig is just something non-descript and moving - an easy target that bass strike.
In deep water, bass are notorious for racing to the top to leap out of the water as soon as they are hooked, often dislodging a heavy football jig when they jump. This is often unavoidable. It is almost impossible to reel in slack line as quickly as a fish can rocket straight to the top. Even if you do reel fast enough to keep the line tight as the fish races to the surface, it is never truly a tight line. Instead, there's a bowed "U" shape due to water drag tension. It may feel tight to you perhaps, but there's always enough slack in the U-bowed line for a fish can to rattle its gills and dislodge a heavy football jig by streaking up and leaping out instantly upon hookset. It's part of the excitement of fishing football jigs.
Customer Tag Watson and Team Partner Win First Place!
Congratulations to Tag Watson and his team partner who took first place in a "Fall Open" over the weekend.
Tag hails from Washington state where he often fishes (and wins) tournaments.
Tag and his team partner certainly whacked some wonderful smallies using heavy one ounce football jigs over the weekend.
"We took first place and big fish this weekend with a winning weight of 22.85 pounds (5 fish). Your dark green pumpkin skirt fished on a 1 oz. Pro Football head jig tore them up! The next five fish we caught and released would have weighed a 19 pound limit as well."
"A 5 inch 97-series Yamamoto double tail skirted hula grub in color 301 was the hot trailer of the day. We used a slow steady retrieve for most of our bites but brief pauses followed by short bursts were effective at times. We had several fish come unbuttoned that would have let us weigh a 25+ pound bag but we lost a few giants. Quite a few times, the jig would jump off a boulder and the smallmouth would hit the jig so hard it would knock a ton of slack in the line. A few times we just couldn't get our hooks set because of the excessive slack and ended up losing three 5 pound plus fish. Man, they just crush that jig. I love it!" - Tag Watson, a customer from Washington state.
And Another Win! First place and Big Fish Prize
One ounce football head jigs with brown purple, dark green pumpkin and black brown craw skirts. Several different trailers were used. Five smallies totaled 23.65 lbs. ~ customer Tag Watson, Washington state
Flat Football Jigs for Bass Fishing ~ Skirt Color Suggestions
Flat Football Jigs for Bass Fishing ~ Skirt Color Suggestions
Black Blues, Black Reds
Black Blue Skirt. Anglers tend to use football jigs in deeper clear to stained water, and often opt for brownish or greenish skirts and trailers. Occasionally, a savvy angler will throw a shad-colored football jig, but that's rare. Rarer still is to throw a black blue football jig, except at night. It also excels at dawn, dusk, on dark mornings, overcast days or when the wind smurs the surface so much it reduces light penetration below, or when the wind creates a mudline - throw the black blue football and score a touchdown!
3/8 oz Football Jig ~ Black Blue
1/2 oz Football Jig ~ Black Blue
1/2 oz Football Jig ~ Black Blue.
3/4 oz Football Jig ~ Black Blue
1/2 oz Football Jig ~ Black Neon
Browns & Purples
1/2 oz Football Jig ~ Jume Bug Bluegill
3/8 oz Football Jig ~ June Bug Bluegill
3/4 oz Football Jig ~ June Bug Bluegill
3/4 oz Football Jig ~ Brown Purple
3/8 oz Football Jig ~ Brown Purple
1/2 oz Football Jig ~ Brown Purple
Brown Purple Skirt. Has 30 strands of purplish brown on the back and 20 strands of brownish purple on the belly. If you're not getting solid strikes that way, rotate the skirt so the purples on the back, the brown on the belly, and see if that turns the trick. One trailer color to try with this skirt is Yamamoto's #150 (smoke pepper). It makes a super subtle clear water combination.
3/4 oz Football Jig ~ PBJ Flash
3/8 oz Football Jig ~ PBJ Flash
1/2 oz Football Jig ~ PBJ Flash
PBJ Flash Skirt. Every strand (44 of them) are heavily metal-foiled on both sides with a lustrous purple metal foil. The photos do not reflect (pun intended) just how heavily-foiled and shimmery these skirts are. The foil does not make the skirts stiff in any way. They are super soft and supple. The gold grains you see in the photo are a left-over residue of the foiling process, and will wash off when used. One soft plastic trailer color to try is Yamamoto's #221 (cinnamon with purple).
3/4 oz Flat Football Jig ~ Black Brown Craw
3/8 oz Football Jig ~ Brown Sunfish
1/2 oz Football Jig ~ Brown Sunfish
Brown Sunfish Skirt. Brown orange skirts always remind me that most jig colors imitate sunfish as well as crawfish. The frosting you see on this skirt is actually highly-reflective gold glitter, but does not come across that way in my photos. The gold glitter is on every strand, including the otrange. Under water, the gold frosting glistens and shimmers, and the mottled black bars heighten the sunfish illusion. A couple of soft plastic trailer colors that go with this skirt are Yamamoto's #194 (watermelon pepper) or #323 (watermelon pepper w/gold).
3/4 oz Flat Football Jig ~ Brown Sunfish #2
3/8 oz Football Jig ~ Brown Sunfish #2
3/8 oz Football Jig ~ Warmouth Sunfish
1/2 oz Football Jig ~ Warmouth Sunfish
3/4 oz Football Jig ~ Warmouth Sunfish
Warmouth Sunfish Skirt. Another sunfish pattern skirt inspired by the voracious Warmouth member of the clan. This skirt features a light greenish, almost yellowish belly, and every strand has orange copper glitter in each strand, plus an orange tail tip. Some soft plastic trailer colors to try with this skirt are Yamamoto's #236 (smoke rootbeer w/copper and green) or #330 (green pumpkin with copper and purple).
1/2 oz Flat Football Jig ~ Green Sunfish
3/4 oz Flat Football Jig ~ Green Sunfish
1/2 oz Football Jig ~ Olive Brown Craw
3/8 oz Football Jig ~ Olive Brown Craw
Greens
These are wide flat-bottomed football heads in 3/8, 1/2, 3/4 ounce sizes. They may not always look like footballs due to the photo angles, but they are all wide flat football heads.
Green Pumpkin Olive Jigs. This skirt color is a special factory run. It has never been made for anyone else nor available anywhere else except at Bassdozer.
It blends 22 strands of dark green pumpkin and 22 strands of olive pumpkin, all heavily barred and spotted with an irregular black print pattern, banded with a black rubber rattle strap.
3/8 oz Football Jig ~ Green Pumpkin Olive
1/2 oz Football Jig ~ Green Pumpkin Olive
3/4 oz Football Jig ~ Green Pumpkin Olive
Green Pumpkin, Watermelon and Watermelon Red Some soft bait manufacturers claim green pumpkin, watermelon and watermelon red are their three top-selling colors worldwide, and anglers who use twin-tail hula or spider grubs on football jigs, they favor green pumpkin, watermelon or watermelon red soft plastic hula or spider grubs on football jigs too. Yet when it comes to skirted jigs like those shown below, jig anglers use far less green than black or brown jigs. That's a big mistake. Use more green jigs - and catch more. Relatively few other jig anglers do.
1/2 oz Football Jig ~ Green Pumpkin
3/8 oz Football Jig ~ Green Pumpkin
3/4 oz Football Jig ~ Green Pumpkin
3/4 oz Football Jig ~ Watermelon
3/8 oz Football Jig ~ Watermelon
1/2 oz Football Jig ~ Watermelon
3/4 oz Football Jig ~ Watermelon Red Pepper
3/4 oz Football Jig ~ Pale Watermelon Red
3/4 oz Football Jig ~ Dark Watermelon Red
Give a Lucky Angler a New TATTOO this Holiday Season!
Give a Lucky Angler a New TATTOO this Holiday Season!
These Tattoo wakebaits are the perfect gift for any angler for Christmas and the Holiday Season. They are very affordably priced, and terribly exciting to use. Fish belt the dickens out of them practically anywhere anytime. There's no angler I know who wouldn't love to get one of these from Santa this Holiday Season.
You can't go wrong to give a Tattoo to the lucky anglers in your life.
Other colors in the store are: Ayu, Chartreuse Shad, Blue Herring and Pearl White. Plus the two new colors below: Gold Shiner and Bone White.
Weight: 5/8 oz.
Body Length: 4-1/2 inches.
Type: Wakebait. Wood. Floating. Surface Swimmer. Wakes and roils surface when reeled steadily.
Tattoo's Surface Swimmer ~ Gold Shiner
Tattoo's Surface Swimmer ~ Bone White
CONSTRUCTION
Tattoo's Surface Swimmer is a heavy duty bait that can handle the biggest bass you can find. It weighs 5/8 ounce, is made of wood, and measures 4-1/2 inches long. It's constructed to handle big bass, but it's not too big to discourage average size bass either.
It's through-wired from nose to tail with stout stainless wire, and the belly treble hangs off a heavy duty (220 lb. test) swivel. These wood lures are solidly constructed to withstand the likes of pike, stripers and inshore saltwater species as well as largemouth, smallmouth and spotted bass. Whatever latches on to it, this bait can subdue. Yet they are delicately balanced for perfect topwater waking action.
They come with two premium VMC #2 black nickel treble hooks. These are heavy duty hooks.
The line tie eye and metal lip are both adjustable (use pliers), enabling an angler to create an infinite variety of surface swimming actions ranging from a tight, fast wriggle to a slow, sweeping, last gasp kind of death roll across the surface. Some of the actions that are possible have never been seen before in a freshwater bass lure.
HOW TO USE
The most effective tactic is to use them as topwater surface swimmers. Simply swim them steadily on the surface. It's deadly!
The best way to describe the action of Tattoo's Surface Swimmer is to visualize, for example, a Heddon Super Spook or Lucky Craft Sammy zigzag action, yet Tattoo's is softer or smoother. The surface swimmer is still an aggressive, exciting non-stop action, except not as splashy as a Spook, Sammy or other "walking baits," albeit every bit as deadly. Tattoo's Surface Swimmer rolls and roils the surface as opposed to frantic splashing.
There are three big differences between traditional "walking baits" versus Tattoo's Surface Swimmer:
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First, no rod action is required to make Tattoo's Surface Swimmer zig and zag. Just steady reeling is all that's required to create the side to side rolling and waking movements.
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Second, whereas other splashier walking baits usually lose some of their effectiveness under bright sun on calm surfaces, Tattoo's Surface Swimmer keeps on producing even under bright skies, clear water and calm conditions.
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Both the line tie and lip are adjustable to produce a variety of movements and actions. No other freshwater lure allows such intense fine-tuning of the lure's action.
Tattoo's Surface Swimmer certainly fills a niche that's sorely missing in most bass angler's game plans. It's swell for musky, pike and stripers too.
The lip and line tie eye are adjustable to fine tune a variety of lure actions.
"These lures are fine works of art. They're exciting and productive to use," says Russ Bassdozer.
"Let Fish do a Tattoo on You!"
It just may be the best angling gift you ever give somebody!
Underwater Photos of Tattoo's Surface Swimmer
Underwater Photos of Tattoo's Surface Swimmer
Anglers are always wondering what a bass sees when it's beneath a topwater bait. The question often raised is, "Can a bass see the colors painted on top of a topwater lure?"
Well, these photos won't answer that question, but they do provide a liittle glimpse taken of Tattoo's Tackle new Surface Swimmer.
The underwater photographer here was really trying to capture the reflection on the surface as a fellow angler reeled the lure past underwater photographer.
This lure really likes to keep the rear half of its back above water on a moderate retrieve. So the angler cranked pretty hard to keep it under, and the bait was rolling up on its sides pretty much to keep it under the surface where the photographer got a good reflection... so you see its white sides or belly (more than its green back) rolled above it.
Tattoo's Freshwater Debut
Tattoo's Freshwater Debut
Mike Dauphin of Tattoo's Tackle has released a new product for freshwater bass. Tattoo's new Surface Swimmer causes an action swimming across the surface unlike anything freshwater gamefish have seen before. It establishes an entire new freshwater lure category called "surface swimmers."
Tattoo's Tackle is located in Rhode Island, where the company designs and manufactures these Surface Swimmers. Famous for crafting wooden surf fishing plugs, this is the company's first parlay into freshwater lures.
"We at Tattoo’s Tackle have been working closely with Russ “Bassdozer” Comeau on introducing this new lure for the freshwater market," says Mike Dauphin.
Now, surface swimmers (as a lure type) have been around saltwater since 1944 which was when Bob Pond of Attleboro, Massachusetts created the first. Bob Pond dubbed his Atom Forty (40) Surface Swimmer the "Forty" because Pond built it for massive striped bass of forty inches or longer that were marauding on the surface in Cape Cod Canal. Interestingly, Cape Cod Canal anglers of that era held a notion that striped bass couldn't be caught on lures, only live or dead bait. Pond's wood creation went on to become perhaps the most famous saltwater striped bass lure of all time.
So surface swimmers have been used in saltwater for over sixty years. Yet, they are virtually unknown in fresh. It's a bridge many great lures never get to cross, until now.
First of its kind for freshwater fish, Tattoo's Surface Swimmer is not nearly as big as the original, the Atom 40. Tattoo's Surface Swimmer weighs 5/8 ounce, is made of wood, and measures 4-1/2 inches long. It's through-wired from nose to tail with stout stainless wire, and the belly treble hangs off a heavy duty (220 lb. test) swivel. The line tie eye and metal lip are both adjustable, enabling an angler to create an infinite variety of surface swimming actions ranging from a tight, fast wriggle to a slow, sweeping, last gasp kind of death roll across the surface. The action has never been seen before in a freshwater bass lure.
The best way to describe the action of a surface swimmer is to visualize a "walking bait" action. For example, think of a Heddon Super Spook or Lucky Craft Sammy zigzag action, yet softer or smoother. The surface swimmer is still an aggressive, exciting non-stop action, except not as splashy, albeit every bit as deadly. Tattoo's Surface Swimmer rolls and roils the surface as opposed to frantic splashing.
There are three big differences between "walking baits" versus Tattoo's Surface Swimmer:
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First, no rod action is required to make the surface swimmer zig and zag. Just steady reeling is all that's required to create the side to side walking movements.
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Second, whereas other walking baits usually lose some of their effectiveness under bright sun on calm surfaces, Tattoo's Surface Swimmer keeps on producing even under bright skies, clear water and calm conditions.
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Both the line tie and lip are adjustable to produce a variety of movements and actions. No other freshwater lure allows such intense fine-tuning of the lure's action.
Tattoo's Surface Swimmer certainly does fill a niche that's sorely missing in the topwater lure market for largemouth, smallmouth and spotted bass. It's swell for musky, pike and freshwater stripers too.
Tattoo's kicks off a brand new freshwater lure type - the surface swimmer.
Colors shown: Blue Herring (top). Ayu (center). Chartreuse Shad (bottom).
The lip and line tie eye are adjustable to fine tune a variety of lure actions.
Colors shown: Ayu (left). Chartreuse Shad (right).
Let freshwater fish do a Tattoo on you! Some of the first few new freshwater colors to be produced by Tattoo's include white pearl, blue herring, chartreuse shad, and an olive green/gold ayu color. "We looked at some of the best freshwater paint patterns today, and particularly felt two paint patterns from Japan - first, chartreuse shad, and second, green ayu were highly effective."
Whereas many other US companies have simply tried to copy these Japanese paint patterns verbatim, Tattoo's Tackle has improved upon them. Using the Chartreuse Shad color as an example, "There aren't all that many freshwater prey species that have sharply defined colors," says Mike Dauphin. "So I went very soft on the lateral line, making it more of a muted yellow than a bold chartreuse, and I went very soft on the black operculum (gill flap) spot behind the eye. It's more of a shadow than a spot. I overlayed a pearl sheen on top of the whole paint so the colors are very soft and flow together. Adding the pearl covering adds a lot of sparkling diffusion of colors, and homogenizes the underlying colors into a blended whole. It's plain to see that it is an original work of art as opposed to a copy cat color," says Mike. As Tattoo's develops new freshwater colors, Tattoo's unique style of blending lure colors will be a basis of other new freshwater colors to come.
"These lures are fine works of art. They're exciting and productive to use. Let freshwater fish do a Tattoo on you," says Russ Bassdozer.
Willow Spinnerbait Blades
Willow Spinnerbait Blades
The venerable Willow blade is often talked about as if all Willows are all the same with identical fishing properties. The truth is that there are many different versions and variants of Willow blades on the market, more than most people realize, and no two Willows fish quite the same. At first glance, they may all look the same, but each has differences in length, width, oval shape, degree of cup, raw base material, stamping and plating that make otherwise similar-looking willow blades behave differently from each other in the water.
The Willow blades shown here turn more tightly, a little faster and in a smaller degree of arc than many other willow blades on the market. They create less torque or resistance when pulled through the water, and that lets them run a little deeper and truer than many other Willow blades.
These are superior performing willow blades. If I had to choose just one Willow out of all the many versions and variants that I've ever tried, this is the one.
Here are some (not all) tips for how to use these Willow blades:
- Size #3-1/2 are best used as front runner blades for small size spinnerbaits (say 1/4 oz). Also as front runners on fast-moving spinnerbaits from 3/8 and up. When moved at slow to normal speeds, a #3-1/2 front-runner tends to stall, not spin and lock up under the wire arm. But if you put the 3-1/2 on a fast-moving spinnerbait, it will spin properly and add a shot of flash and color (if it's a painted blade) to complement the back blade.
- Size #4, #4-1/2 and #5 are the sizes you see on over 90% of all bass spinnerbaits that have willow blades.
- Size #4 tends to be used more often on 1/4, 3/8 and some 1/2 ounce spinnerbaits.
- Sizes #4-1/2 and #5 tend to be used most often on 1/2 ounce and up.
- On double Willow spinnerbaits, occasionally (and more often with a pair of #4s), both blades may be the same size. But 90% of the time with double willows, the front blade tends to be a half or full size smaller than the back blade.
- Size #4 Willow blade can also be productive as a front blade ahead of another blade type (Indiana, Colorado, Oklahoma, etc.). I doubt you'll find many spinnerbaits configured that way in a store or catalog, but you can make them yourself with these blades. See if it doesn't work for you.
- Size #5-1/2 and #6. These larger size willows are not commonly seen on spinnerbaits, but it's well worth your while to switch to some #5-1/2 and #6 willow blades on your more stable-running spinnerbaits. These big blades tend to produce fewer but larger bass. They are trophy bass sized willow blades. So if you want to increase your odds of landing bigger-than-average bass, it pays to use these bigger-than-average size #5-1/2 and #6 willow blades.
Here is a comparison photo and size chart for these willow blades:
| Style | Size | Length | Width |
| Willow | #3-1/2 | 1.562" | .511" |
| Willow | #4 | 1.872" | .640" |
| Willow | #4-1/2 | 2.062" | .740" |
| Willow | #5 | 2.260" | .836" |
The price is for a pack of ten (10) spinnerbait blades all the same size and same color.
10 Spinnerbait Blades ~ Willow ~ #3-1/2 Nickel
10 Spinnerbait Blades ~ Willow ~ #3-1/2 Gold
10 Spinnerbait Blades ~ Willow ~ #4 Nickel
10 Spinnerbait Blades ~ Willow ~ #4 Gold
10 Spinnerbait Blades ~ Willow ~ #4-1/2 Nickel
10 Spinnerbait Blades ~ Willow ~ #5 Nickel
Spinnerbaits for Bass Fishing Success
Super Wire Arm. Super wire is stronger, gets bent less and vibrates more than an ordinary wire arm.
.035 diameter wire arm.
3/8 oz Spinnerbait ~ Style D ~ Herring
.035 diameter wire arm.
3/4 oz Spinnerbait ~ Style A ~ White Pearl
3/4 oz Spinnerbait ~ Style A ~ White Pearl
3/4 oz Spinnerbait ~ Style A ~ Chartreuse White Silver
Heavy Duty .040 Diameter Wrapped Closed Wire Arm.
3/4 oz Spinnerbait ~ Style A ~ Chartreuse White Silver
3/4 oz Spinnerbait ~ Style T ~ Spot Special
1/2 oz Spinnerbait ~ Style T ~ Rainbow Trout
1/2 oz Spinnerbait ~ Style T ~ Rainbow Trout
1 oz Spinnerbait ~ Style C ~ Chartreuse White Silver
Two-Tone Laminate Blades. Both blades are two colors. Both painted white on one side and painted chartreuse on the other side.
1 oz Spinnerbait ~ Style C ~ Chartreuse Pearl Blue
1-1/2 oz Spinnerbait ~ Style A ~ Pearl Blue Silver
A Few New Bass Spinnerbaits
Super Wire Arm. Super wire is stronger, gets bent less and vibrates more than an ordinary wire arm.
.035 diameter wire.
1/2 oz Spinnerbait ~ Style A ~ Pearl Blue Silver
1/2 oz Spinnerbait ~ Style R ~ Super Silver Shad
1/2 oz Spinnerbait ~ Style A ~ Smallie Special
1/2 oz Spinnerbait ~ Style A ~ Citrus Shad Wrap
Heavy Duty .040 Wire Arm.
3/4 oz Spinnerbait ~ Style T ~ Spot Special
1 oz Spinnerbait ~ Style A ~ Herring
3/4 oz Spinnerbait ~ Style C ~ Chartreuse White Pearl
Two-Tone Laminate Blades. Both blades are painted white on one side and painted chartreuse on the other side.
Short Arm Spinnerbaits for Slamming Tough Weeds and Grass
Short Arm Spinnerbaits for Tough Weeds and Grass
In the southwestern US desert lakes, dense ledges of underwater tumbleweeds constitute semi-permanent cover that endures for years, even decades.
Each tumbleweed has an odd round shape and averages 2-3 feet wide. They can get piled five or ten feet deep in windrows that are dozens of yards long. Or, there can be five or ten tumbleweeds locked together, forming isolated cover. They're terribly spiny. A tumbleweed is like a brillo pad, except there's a lot more space for stuff to hide inside its thorny haven. Small bait can crawl, swim or slip inside tumbleweeds easily, but bass can't go where the hiding bait can go. So deep in the inner sanctum of a tumbleweed is a safe haven. This is pretty much the same thing with dense grass beds of all kinds, that bait can slip deep into the inner recesses of the grass, where bass can't easily get at them. Of course, some grass species are stiffer or spinier than others, but no grass is as thorny as tumbleweeds (although spiny naiad is close). Nevertheless, the way to fish tumbleweeds - or tough grass - with spinnerbaits is the same, and short arms like these work best.
Cast, out, let the spinnerbait flutter down and make contact with the tumbleweeds (or grass). Sight the rod directly straight down the line without any angle or bend where the line comes off the rod tip, essentially fishing the line straight off the reel - "straight-lining" - a spinnerbait so it smashes across the tops of windrowed tumbleweed ledges. This is called "slamming" because the spinnerbait just slams the tumbleweeds hard, jarring loose all sorts of nymphs, fish fry and critters holed up in the protective tumbleweeds. Slamming actually knocks - or startles - so much food out of the tumbleweeds that it's almost a method to stir up a chum trail. It starts a food chain going as the slamming lure rips and rocks the tumbleweeds, knocking all kinds of critters loose. Bass go ape when that happens.
Inside the tumbleweeds (or grass), there is an ample, captive food source for them, but bass usually can't get at it.
So bass are ever-present on these tumbleweed ledges - but mostly must patiently bide their time. They cannot go into the tumbleweeds which are like barbed wire. They watch and wait for an impaired or careless morsel to fall out or otherwise make a mistake and blunder out in the open.
So they have slim success getting at the food holed up in the tumbleweeds - until it crawls out on its own such as during a "hatch" when nymphs must emerge to metamorphose or during a species seasonal migration when they shift locations en masse - or whenever a straight-lined spinnerbait slams the food chain loose, that kickstarts the ever-present bass into instant active feeding mode.
Now just change the word tumbleweed to pads or coontail or other tough weeds - and you can do the same thing by straight-lining a spinnerbait. It will startle and flush all kinds of food out as it plows and slams through weedbeds
Think of it this way, if your snug as a bug laying in your cozy bed, or hanging out comfortably in your house or whatever safe shelter you're in or under, if it suddenly shook to the rafters, you'd probably run out of there in a panic. That's exactly what happens when a spinnerbait slams through a patch of tumbleweeds or tough grass, shaking the foundations, and stampeding everything out of there. Bass will not be far behind!
As the spinnerbait grabs in tumbleweeds or grass snags, you simply use the reel alone to winch it out of there. Don't snap the rod or move the rod to the side. Have the rod sighted straight down the line, and use the reel alone to winch it out of there. Never sweep the rod to the side, as you'll get solidly snagged if the rod moves to the side. Always keep the rod sighted straight down the line, which will help keep the spinnerbait wire and hook straight up. It's hard to imagine a spinnerbait getting stuck when it stays upright. That bent wire arm is a formidable snag-bumper guard - if it stays upright.
Using the reel to power-winch the spinnerbait loose really helps rearrange the furniture down there, and that's what upsets all kinds of critters who bolt, attracting bass. So you really don't want to use the rod to snap the spinnerbait out of there too quickly nor too easily. You really want to use the reel to wrestle the spinnerbait through the cover, making maximum mayhem moving the cover. But if you must snap or lift the rod tip as a last resort to break a spinnerbait loose, make sure to lift it straight up directly aligned with the fishing line. Needless to say, this requires a relatively stouter rod and heavier line than usually used with spinnerbaits. The wire used onthese short arms is heavy too. It's .040 diameter wire.
A single blade spinnerbait is best for this. A single blade comes through tough weeds better than a pair of blades because there aren't any components (beads, clevis, front blade, etc) on the wire arm to hang up. Without a front blade on the wire, the plain wire arm effectively only serves the purpose of a weedguard.
Nor do you want to use a second trailer hook while "slamming" the grass. A trailer hook will only foul and hang up.
When you straight-line winch a spinnerbait loose from one weed clump, you want to repeat the whole process on the next weed clump and the one after that, all the way through the weed bed. So make sure you constantly let the spinnerbait flutter down and constantly make contact with the weeds, just winching the weeds apart and knocking everything loose - until a nice bass belts you.
Heavy Wire Arm. Short arm is heavy .040 diameter wire.
Thumper Blade. It's common to call any single Colorado blade a "thumper" blade. The blade used here, however, is no ordinary one. It is the ultimate thumper. What makes it thump more than any other Colorado blade is first, it is a thicker, therefore heavier blade. Thicker material (stamped brass stock) is used -b ut that's not all. The cup or concave/convex curvature of this special "thumper" blade is shallower (less cup) than ordinary Colorado blades. The shallow cup and thicker material causes it to thump to the maximum degree. Try one of these, and you'll never call an ordinary Colorado blade a thumper again.
1/2 oz Spinnerbait ~ Style B ~ White Shad
1/2 oz Spinnerbait ~ Style B ~ Gold Shiner
3/4 oz Spinnerbait ~ Style B ~ Brown Sunfish
1/2 oz Spinnerbait ~ Style B ~ Black Neon
1/2 oz Spinnerbait ~ Style B ~ Rusty Red Craw
3/4 oz Spinnerbait ~ Style B ~ Black Blue
1/2 oz Spinnerbait ~ Style B ~ Green Pumpkin
3/4 oz Spinnerbait ~ Style B ~ White Shad ~ Gold
1/2 oz Spinnerbait ~ Style B ~ White Pearl
3/4 oz Spinnerbait ~ Style B ~ Dark Watermelon Red
3/4 oz Spinnerbait ~ Style B ~ White Shad
1/2 oz Spinnerbait ~ Style B ~ Gold Shiner
1/2 oz Spinnerbait ~ Style B ~ Olive Brown Craw
1/2 oz Spinnerbait ~ Style B ~ Watermelon Chartruese
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