The #2 Jigging Rapala is a tremendous tool for big crappies for many of the same reasons. It won’t glide 3 feet from vertical, but it can be made to circle within an area at least 2 feet in diameter, if allowed to fall on a slack line. With a maggot or two or just a small chunk of minnow on the dangling treble, the #2 Jigging Rapala still circles on the drop on 4-pound line.
As always, the lift-drop portion of the presentation is for attraction. Bigger fish like walleyes and bass often hit these baits on the drop, but what really gets panfish to bite lures like the Chubby Darter and the Jigging Rapala is the pause, or the jiggle-pause. It’s difficult to hold these center-balanced baits still. The Chubby Darter almost never stops moving. The tapered tail keeps bobbing and twitching long after you place the rod in a rod holder on a dead calm day. The Jigging Rapala keeps sidling around like a compass needle trying to find true north, long after the last jigging motion. Most days, the bait is doing all the “jiggling” required to trigger panfish all by itself.
In some waters, the visual aspects of attraction are less important than the thump and vibration. Or the visual aspect needs to be bolder. In muddy, stained, or cloudy water, a bladebait is overlooked as the natural replacement for jigging spoons and other leadheads. A Reef Runner Cicada or Heddon Sonar not only gets away from vertical on the drop, but also creates such dynamic vibration on the lift that fish can’t help but know it’s there, no matter how opaque the water.
Most ice fishermen think that when fish approach but won’t bite it’s time to finesse with light line and tiny jigs, which is often true. But not always. The opposite approach is to attack their lateral lines—the sensory organs fish use to detect vibration in the water. Fish that won’t move for conventional jig-minnow presentations sometimes ram a bladebait.
Use swivels with swimming baits, bladebaits, and swimming jigs to eliminate line twist. A tiny #14 or #12 barrel swivel tied in about 3 feet up the line from the bait is sufficient to keep line twist from ruining the day.
Swimmin’ Jigs
A true swimming jig is one designed to fly to the sides on a dead drop. Few true leadheads really swim much without the addition of metal wings or plastic tails. Some jigs, like the Lindy-Little Joe Flyer, glide really well, having a spinner blade molded into the head. On the subtle end of the spectrum, most crappie anglers know that if they insert a light jighead inside a small plastic tube and don’t push the head all the way to the tip, the combo will spiral on the drop.
The 1/16-ounce Micro Air-Plane Jig drops straight down without help. On 4- or 6-pound line, it doesn’t do what larger Air-Planes do, which is to circle on the drop. But with the addition of the right plastic tail, it does get away from the vertical quite a bit. In the In-Fisherman tank room, I was able to achieve a glide of about 20 inches out from plumb-line vertical with the right rod action and the addition of a Tad’s Lures Puddle Jumper—a plastic tail with wings that really takes crappies through the ice.
