(Editor's note: "Catching Bass with Dustin Wilks" airs three times per week on Sportsman Channel – 9:30 a.m. ET Friday, 4:30 p.m. Sunday and 6:30 a.m. Wednesday. He provides BassFans with supplemental information about each episode in these weekly submissions.)
If you only watch one of my shows all year, make sure this week's is this one.
Some shows have bigger fish and some have more, but this one is the best, in my opinion. It's easy to be hard on yourself after the fact and especially watching yourself fish. In this show I explained things well, the camera work was great and hey, I didn’t look as fat as usual!
The show is about fishing rivers with swim jigs and topwaters ... what could be more fun!
Fishing a swim jig is a popular way to fish, but not as mainstream as a spinnerbait or crankbait. Most guys who fish a swim jig are probably just like BassFan readers – serious, educated fishermen consuming all fishing information in order to get better.
I learned about swimming jigs from fishing a little lake in a 10-foot plastic boat when I was 10 years old. There were a father and son who always fished the same lake, sometimes taking me fishing. They too had 10-foot plastic boats.
They were far more advanced in fishing than I, and I always tried to pay attention to what they were doing. Sure, there were magazines and TV shows, but nothing beats time on the water. So one day, the dad came by me in his boat and asked what I was fishing with. I showed him the jig with an Uncle Josh pork rind with kicking legs. He asked: "You just swimming that jig along?"
“No," I said, "just fishing it on the bottom." But that one comment made me change my mindset. Mind you, this was in the late '80s and a swim jig was nothing new to this man.
So with my head filled with new information and possibilities after just one comment, I began fishing the jig faster and having way more success. I was still fishing it close to the bottom, but swimming it maybe 10 feet at a time before letting it settle. So that day, long ago, my mind was opened to a swim jig.
Fast forward to this week’s show and 30 years later, and not much has changed. It's still an old technique, and still not all that many fishermen use it.
With most techniques there is literally not much that changes – we just rename it and remarket it to a new generation with little improvements along the way. What is cool is that it gets some young kid super excited about fishing, just like I was with the swim jig.
Think about the Ned Rig. Al Lindner showed us all that decades ago, just a mushroom-head jig with an open hook. Someone probably showed that to him. Neko Rig new? Hardly. My second year fishing B.A.S.S. in an Open in 2000, I drew a guy who showed me sticking a finishing nail in one end of a wacky rig. New name, old technique, I guess.
So while the swim jig doesn’t have a fancy name, it is no doubt more popular than at any time, but it is still under-fished by the masses and relatively misunderstood.
Back to my show, I was fishing fast on a section of river that was new to me, casting to miles of shoreline covered in wood. My weapon – a 1/4-ounce swim jig with the new Culprit Flutter Craw trailer. The trailer is a multi-use bait. It's long enough to Texas-rig or fish on a swinging football head, but requires trimming for a swim jig. I like being able to modify it to suit whatever jig I’m using.
The key to rigging up a swim jig is balance. Make sure your Flutter Craw is perfectly straight and make sure there is not more skirt material on one side of the jig than the other. This ensures you don’t get much roll or the jig coming in crooked. It's a balancing act for sure, but once you get it right, you’ve got a fish-catching machine.
With the Flutter Craw you have the option of trimming the two middle legs completely off and just having the back legs, which I do most often, but occasionally I get a jig I can’t get balanced well and leaving the middle legs on acts to stabilize the bait, so it's nice to have that option. Sometimes I like a really thin skirt material and the legs look good on the side.
For me, there are two kinds of swim jigs – those made for fishing light cover and clearer water with fluorocarbon and ones made for fishing heavy cover with braided line. The fluorocarbon jigs have lighter-gauge hooks. I prefer the braid for control, but sometimes the fluorocarbon gets more bites, especially around boat docks and in deeper water.
On the show I actually started with fluoro, as that's what I had rigged from a prior trip, and after the first couple of fish I switched to braid. I prefer 50- or 65-pound Yo-Zuri Super Braid – it's good stuff.
You will notice on the show, I'm constantly making short rod twitches, making the jig look frightened in the water. You will get more bites this way. I’d say you get about half your bites in the first 2 feet of the retrieve, those fish are pure reactionary and probably don’t require the twitches, but after that, it is all about the twitch.
To fish like this you need a light, powerful rod. I prefer a 7'3" Falcon Expert Amistad rod. I use both the extra-heavy and heavy actions. The heavy is a bit easier to cast with some tip for casting, but if you get the hang of it, the extra-heavy is just a beast and you can really control any big fish that may bite in heavy cover. Both are great.
There is literally no better technique for covering lots of shallow water with heavy cover than a swim jig. Crankbaits are great for deep and mid depths, but if you’ve got nasty shallow cover, you need efficiency, and that is what the swim jig gives you. It comes through everything and you can drop down deeper if you need to.
My show is a bit different than some others. Many shows have a bait in mind they want to teach about, but I always try to fish the conditions for the day with the lures I feel will be best. Of course, there are times when I try to force something, but in general I fish with what should be best.
After I caught a ton of fish on the swim jig, I was wondering if they would smash a topwater, so I switched to a 4-inch Yo-Zuri Pencil, which is a walking bait, and got some really cool bites on that as well. I actually wished I would have mixed that bait in more as one of my biggest fish came on it that day. I fish the Pencil on 15-pound Yo-Zuri Hybrid and a Falcon Expert Topwater rod (6’10’').
What a fun show! I hope you get to watch it.
