(Editor's note: The following is the latest installment in a series of fishing tips presented by The Bass University. Check back each Friday for a new tip.)
Most anglers would agree with Gerald Swindle’s statement that a jig is “the most versatile bait in your tackle box,” but the two-time Bassmaster Angler of the Year says that most fishermen confuse versatility for complexity. In other words, they’re making jig fishing too hard.
“The more simple, the better,” Swindle explains. If you’re worried about whether your black and blue jig has one too many strands of blue, you’re wasting your brain power, he said. If you have “31,000 colors of jigs,” you’re likewise heading down the wrong path.
“Fish are not that smart,” he continued. “They have a little bitty brain.”
Swindle generally only throws two different color jigs – black and brown. “When they don’t want to bite the brown one, I go to the black,” he said. It’s that simple. He generally puts a green chunk on his brown jig and a black and blue chunk on his black jig, but added that “when I get real crazy, I swap ‘em.”
He said if you want to improve your jig fishing, you’re better off worrying about the quality of the jig itself and where you’re putting it. He even keeps the sizes simple, noting that 99 percent of the time he’ll go with a 3/8- or 1/2-unce model. If he wants to fish it deeper, where most pros would fish something heavier, “I just let it sink a little longer.” That doesn’t take any more time than retying. He also differs from some of his competitors in that he doesn’t like a super-heavy wire hook – what he described as a “71/0 bear hook” – because it takes too much pressure to penetrate. He doesn’t like rattles, either. It’s more important to make sure that you don’t have what he calls a “black lab jig,” where you have to throw it and go get it. Snaglessness is critical.
Swindle also notes that his tackle choices have changed as fishing lines have evolved. When mono was the line of choice, he’d use a very stiff rod, because the line had lots of stretch and he needed to compensate for that fact. Now that companies like Sunline make high-quality fluorocarbons with comparatively little stretch, he’s migrated back to a stick with a softer tip to absorb some of the shock. He also likes a 6.3:1 gear ratio reel, unlike the faster models that many others prefer, because the high-speed versions tend not to have sufficient power to crank a big fish out of heavy cover.
Whether you’re using 16- to 25-pound fluorocarbon or 80-pound braid, this is fishing’s equivalent of hand-to-hand combat, so when you get a bite, set the hook, reel fast and “don’t give him a chance” to escape. The biggest mistake that he sees less experienced anglers make is to have their rod tips higher than his preferred 10 o’clock position, which means they don’t have control when the fish eats.
Finally, he encourages anglers to study their jigs in a swimming pool or other clear water environment. You may be surprised at how little human-imparted action it takes to get the jig to flutter and move.
If you want to learn some of the other nuances that have enabled Swindle to ride a jig to two Angler of the Year titles – like why he threads on his chunk and why he doesn’t use curly-tailed trailers below a certain water temperature – check out his full video, available only by subscribing to The Bass University TV.
