Jigs are here to stay. So long as people pursue fish, weight-and-bait tactics will exist. And the whole idea hasn’t changed much since the beginning. True, Fred Flintstone used rocks to get his line down to the bassasauruses. Nuts and bolts comprised the next huge advancement in sinkers. Then some genius decided to use lead, not the heaviest or densest element, but the most commonly available that’s not radio-active or in a liquid state.

But some later genius first put the lead right on the hook. Now there was a guy with some real Albert in his veins. He knew that the farther the weight was from the bait, the less control he had over what his bait was doing. Rigging with weights, he decided, compromised his sense of feel, since fish could move the bait toward the sinker without being felt.

We still use rigs, but maybe not so often as Fred Flintstone did. Rigs will fool a few persnickety fish, after you fail to catch any on jigs. Jigs are precise tools, and a classic presentation for walleyes since the 1950s, when monofilament lines appeared. What makes a jig classic, however, isn’t the fact that it’s been on the shelves for the past 40 years. A classic is a jig that fits cleanly in a well-defined, well-traveled niche. It functions the way it’s designed to work, and it hooks well. A classic is a jig that works. But that doesn’t mean it’s here to stay.

Today’s classics, however, are even better. The advent of advanced tempering processes in the past five years brought better hooks to the scene—thinner, sharper, stronger hooks that sink in quickly to the set and won’t bend out on big fish. Thinner-diameter steel and smaller barbs allow easier penetration. In the past two or three years, many jig makers have worked with hook manufacturers to design premium hooks for jigs. The results are right before your eyes.

But jigs need more than sharp hooks. Head designs have evolved through the years into task-specific tools for walleyes. Though, for the most part, jigs are still just sinkers on the hook, little differences can mean a lot some days. Choose the right tool for the job and the process of presenting baits and hooking fish becomes much easier.

Leeches And Crawlers

Slip floats demand a small jig. Leeches are the most commonly used bait, though other baits work well under the right circumstances. A small jig allows the leech to move and swim more freely.

Ideal jigs for leeches are 1/32- and 1/16-ounce sizes. The problem with jigs this small, until recently, has been hook size. A jig with a hook smaller than a #6 has too small a gap for walleyes. It bounces free on the hookset, unable to penetrate and hold in the tough mouth of a walleye. In most cases, jigs this size were designed for panfish, with panfish hooks. Others that size have collars for attaching plastics, which is a waste of lead on a slip-float jig.

For the past several years, Jack’s Jigs have offered 1/32-ounce ballheads in eye-popping colors with #6 and #4 hooks. Now Gopher Tackle has introduced the Leech Head jig with #6 or #4 Mustad Accu-Point hooks. Most of the lead on the Leech Head is below the shank of the hook, with the eye tight to the head, to further increase the gap. Collarless jigs are classics for presenting leeches on slip floats, and larger versions of these same designs work well for pitching crawlers.