I love feeling responsible for triggering fish strikes with jigging lures. The culmination of selecting the best lure for the conditions and performing specific jigging action, based on how I think fish are responding to the bait, often tempts fish strikes—which keeps me craving much more of the same action.
Flash and swimming lures are two popular baits for vertical jigging. Flash lures are quite easy to use and can produce lots of fish every season. Swimming lures also fool lots of fish—however, it takes a bit more practice to master certain moves and to know when it’s best to use them. Properly jigged in a timely manner, both excel in certain situations.
Flash Lures—Jigging a flash lure is pretty straightforward. A basic lift-fall-hold jigging action creates lots of vibration and flash on the upstroke and free-fall, and a timed pause gives fish the opportunity to strike. The key is to keep it simple and try to get a rhythm going that seems to trigger the most strikes.
Drop the bait to bottom, raise it 3 to 6 inches, and hold for about 5 seconds. (I’ve lost count of the times fish bit before I ever started jigging.) Next, lift the rod tip up 10 to 12 inches to send the lure darting up and away, flashing and vibrating. Instantly drop the rod tip back to the starting point and let the lure free-fall, fluttering and flashing like an injured baitfish, back into place.
The pausing, or hold, is the final and often most important aspect of the lift-fall-hold jigging sequence. Holding the bait motionless gives fish the opportunity to time their attack—and it’s often when they inhale the bait. Count if you must, and let the bait rest for 5 seconds or longer. During the pause, one trick is twitching the spoon lightly to get the bait tipped on the lower treble to sway back and forth, keeping the spoon stationary. The slight action of the swinging lower treble seems to add enough motion to the lure to entice fussy fish.
Rip jigging is another variation, but the basic jigging motion remains a lift-fall-hold. The aggressive technique seems to call fish in for a look and the intense action can trigger reaction strikes. (See the illustration.)
In open water, fish slam flash lures that aren’t tipped with bait. But in winter, tipping the lower treble with a minnow, minnow-head, or grub is part of the flash lure package.
Let the fish determine what type of bait to use and how to tip it on the hook. In most cases, a minnow-head works great. The head stays fairly secure on the hook and adds enough scent to trigger strikes. But I’ve also experienced a half minnow triggering more strikes. Using a whole minnow isn’t out of the question, either, even though the complete package (lure and minnow) may measure 5 to 6 inches. Sometimes packing the treble with 14 grubs is what fish want; other times, adding one maggot to each hook produces better than any other method. Whatever fish want, give it to them.
The best way to tip a minnow or minnow-head on your hook is to drive the hook point down through the top of the skull and jaw, rather than starting the hook point under the jaw and then up through the skull. When tipping with grubs or maggots, center-hooked grubs stay on better.
