WRB-2.0

Poor quality hook not tempered properly. If you are having problems others using them have the same issues. You should not be able to open the jig hook bend catching bass of any size. Snagging and bending hooks or flattening hook points is a different issue. Both jig sponsors can help you with this problem Do-It jig molds makes nearly every jig design possible, take a look at Barlows Tackle. Tom

Bo's Nu Jig isn't a sponsored product on this site. I did look at this design and like it, FYI, TW offers this jig with a Owner hook. Both both site sponsors NorthStar and Siebert offer high quality jigs in several head designs that are very competitive priced ith excellent hooks and materials. Bottom line we have excellent jigs to choose from today. Tom

6. Relaying on the rod to feel strikes. I thought this would create some discussion because most bass anglers rely too much on the rod to feel strikes. We pay premium $$$ for super sensitive rods. I believe in using high quality light weight and strong jig rods and have been doing that for 40 years, since graphite rods came on the market. A 40 year old rod doesn't compare to today's state of the art rods, yet we managed to detect jig strikes back then using the same technique I use today. The bass haven't changed how they strike a jig; engulf it, crunch it and reject it. If for some reason the bass decides the jig is real food and continues eating it, we all can detect that strike because the line is moving and we feel that movement with the rod. The truth is the most expensive sensitive rod can't detect slight line movement. For this reason you should run the line over the tip of your index finger so you can detect the slightest differences in line movement or tension far better than any rod ever made. With time on the water you develop a sense of feel and know without seeing or feeling the rod move a jig strike and set the hook into nothing that turns into a bass. If you rely solely on the rod, you will ever develop that intuitive feel needed to become a good jig angler. Tom

I almost never respond to "best" --------. If you want big custom hand poured worms check Uptom's Customs worms. I doubt if lake G bass have seen these before. Josh makes colors not shown on his site, give him a call. Night Stocker, Midnight, black grape w/ blue vein and celestial nights should work for you. The 9" straight tail is a good worm to start with. Tom

It is very difficult to cast and retrieve a jig from one position standing on the bank due to the fact you are always retrieving the jig up hill from deeper to shallower water. The seasonal period when bass are close to the bank where a shore angler can cast to a shallow water bass with a jig without spooking the fish is during the spawn or spring. It can be done, the question is why use a jig when shore fishing? I realize some anglers are shore bond, no boat or boats are not allowed. When I shore fish my jigs stay home and I use a T-rigged worm, grub, plastic craw or creature. I do this because a T-rig can use a wider variety of hook styles and sizes, easier to carry, less trouble with snags and versitile by pegging a glass bead for a instant slip shot rig. I can use different weight and bigger worms. Another point to clarify is the pace to fish jigs, it's not always slooooow, sometimes a faster pace is better than saturating a piece of cover with lots of casts, I hate to that! I would rather make a long casts and cover more water, structure and potential bass, then make short precise cast to targets. I will make several casts on a piece of structure and fish it thoroughly from several different angles and depths from a distance, often well over 90'. I can't remember the last time a bass bite a dead stocked jig! 99% of jig strikes happen when the jig is moving through the water or stopped for a brief moment with the skirt breathing, the trailer moving, unless you are bed fishing. The thought process that active bass are loners holding on a specific piece of cover or structure isn't true. . Bass, especially active feeders, move around when hunting and rarely feed alone! Inactive bass tend to be loners and very difficult to catch. When I catch bass on jigs, it's usually several on one small area. My advice; look for groups of active bass and forget the notion of targeting single random bass. When you catch a good size bass, there should be more close by, don't leave active fish to look for another lone bass. Tom

When you invest in good quality rods and reels your priority should be in product reliability, warranty and customer service. Good rods and reels will last more than a decade if you take care of them. So take your time, go to several tackle shops, not discount box stores, and touch, feel and discuss the differences with skilled sales people and knowledgable anglers. Reels; Ardent, Daiwa, Shimano all make excellent bait casting reels with good customer service, warranties, service techs and up grades with bearing and other parts. Rods; ALX, Dobyn's, Lamiglas have phenomenal customer servive and warranties. Loomis NRX is the top rod and most expensive over the counter rod, however warranty and customer service isn't what it once was since Shimano owns them. St Croix has a good reputation on this site and make good quality products, I don't own any and don't have personal experience. If you want quality with less warranty or customer service the are several other rod and reel makers around, just need to research spare parts and service. I read good reports about Lew's TP1H tournament reels for example. Tom

Take a look at Okuma CC-C-701MH or -761H Cedros Coastal spinning rods and reels. Made for calico bass and pacific yellowtail, both very strong fish in kelp paddys. Tom

I have posted several threads on this subject and don't know how to recover them on this site using the search tool.You can swim any jig by retrieving it through the water column instead of slowly along the bottom. There are hundreds of jig head shapes, all trying to improve some design feature to enhance the jig performance. Knowone has the panacea jig design for all presentations. Common mistakes are; 1. Using jigs that are too heavy. 2. Using jigs with the wrong style hook, size and dull points. 3. Fishing jigs in the wrong place at the wrong time. Location is critical to bass fishing success. 4. Fishing jigs with too light of tackle. 5. Trying to fish jigs up hill from shore. 6. Relying of the rod to feel strikes. 7. Not setting the hook fast enough. 8. Failing to concentrate on what the jig is doing or feels like. Tom

Catt posted a thread on this subject recently. The incredible jig, it can catch nearly every type of predator fish but not all the time. You can try to force feed bass jigs, but when they don't want it, they will not strike it! It's knowing when to hold em or fold em! I doubt anyone has spent more time on the water jig fishing than I have..about 6 decades, longer than most bass anglers have lived. Rarely do I bass fish and not try jigs, just keeping the bass honest. Strike detection can be difficult and the majority of bass jig anglers miss more strikes than they detect. I hear it now...not me!!! Guess what, that includes you and me! We all detect the very aggressive active bass strike, we all miss some some strikes that we simply can't detect. The frustrating part of missed jig strikes is bass over 8 lbs with big mouths that reject the jig before we know they bit it. Fish long enough and you will detect that big bass strike and that is what jig fishing is all about. Tom

www.fishsniffer.com/ckellog/070416pardee.html or CA state record Smallmouth Bass search. Story of Fish Chris lake Pardee smallmouth. Tom

The late Bill Murphy (in Pursuit of Giant Bass) used a Cardinal 7 spinning reel on a custom 7' 6" spinning rod, light salt water blank with large salt water guides for years!

1/3rd the line # test for mono or FC line. PS; don't practice bad habits!

Aaron grew up in SoCal fishing windy weather in deep clear rocky structure reservoirs and has a lot of time on the water watching his line, feeling slight changes in line slack and looking into the water for fish reaction and precise boat control.Aaron is gifted with his sense of feel! Tom

The line shouldn't be an issue, learning to cast can be. I believe this site has vedio's on how to cast a baitcaster. If the spool tension is set snug, the line slowly dropping when the spool is released with about a 1/2 casting weight, you should be OK. The rod is a big contributor to sussfull casting. Take your time and make shorter casts to start with to learn the timing needed to load up the rod, get your wrist moving correctly etc., Use a line conditioner like KVD or TangleFree. Tom

Soft mucky bottom isn't good for either T- or C-rigs using traditional weights between 3/16 to 3/4 oz. Check out the Mojo rig, site has a Vedio, split shot or slip shot rigs. The key is using lighter weight 3/32 to 1/8 oz and small high flotation worms. In the weeds you want a straight tail worm that swims through easier. 4 1/2" to 6" worms work good on the finesse presentations, with size 1 light wire worm hooks. Tom

You can make a good lure retriever with your 3 oz weight. Add a larger split ring like a 1" key ring and put 3 to 4, 8" long #8 stainless steel sash lengths on the big split ring. Put the weight on the split ring, tie a 50' cord onto the split ring and add a large salt water type snap swivel on the split ring. Clip the lure retriever onto your line with the snagged crankbait while keeping some tension on the line and let weighted retriever slide down the line. Shake the cord that is tied onto the lure retriever until it snags the crankbait, pull up the lure with the retriever attached. attach the free end of the retriever cord to a boat cleat in case you drop the cord into a deep water tree. Been doing this about 4 decades, works good, saved lots of my lures, including some expensive swimbaits! Tom

Your measuring the surface water temps, bass don't live there! Use and believe in your electronics; find the baitfish and depth of the life zone, the bass we be there. If shallower water has prey, it usually will at night during the summer period, the will feed there. Swimbaits are sight lures, better in water with good visual clarity. Triple trout is a hard jointed lure that has a lot more body action than a soft plastic Hudd, there isn't any way to know the activity level of the bass without offering both to determine a preference. Tom

Lake Shasta, 1957. Rigged Creme worm fished with a depsey sinker clipped onto a swivel clip with the rigged worm leader and dragging the rig over points. Two old guys showed me how to rig the "rubber worms" and gave me a few to try out. All the bass were over 3 lbs and couldn't get any bass on the lures we had with us on a family vacation. We ran out of the rubber worms and couldn't find them anywhere. Never will forget that experience. Tom

Fishing higher in the water column with a shorter smaller worm: 3" in lieu of 4" for example. Aaron fine tunes his presentations, may make a 1 lb change in his line strength, 1/32 oz change in the weight, it's more than likely something very small that most anglers don't even consider a change. Tom

It's been since ’94 that my PB 19.3 LMB was caught on a hair jig with pork trailer. My 5 top bass all exceed any bass caught in Texas for decades. Tom

Bill Siemantel

Today's high end bass rod blanks are more about light weight scrimless construction to improve vibration feed back. Scrim is the thin fiber mat layer used in the traditional design rod blanks that aid in hoop strength and flexing but deaden vibration. With today's high modulus graphite fibers and high strength flexible resins scrim can be eliminated and still maintain light weight high strength rods. Loomis NRX was one of the first rod makers to offer scrimless blanks, ALX Hydra blanks are also scrimless, not sure about St Croix higher end blanks. The modulus of a fishing rod blank is the total sum of the fibers and resins it is made up with and changes from butt to tip. rating the fiber modulus independently is marketing technique that few rod builders use today. Tom

You tie the jig without the weed guard, then glue the guard in the hole after your are done. Most jig molds have a Dow pin to put in place of the fiber weedguards that creates the hole in the jig head. Another option is adding a piece of finesse worm on a HitchHiker spring and clip that onto the jig line tie eye and cover the hook like a T-rigged worm. I cut the finesse style small diameter worms about 11/2" to 2" long, split the tail so the hook point goes into the V cut up to the hook barb. This makes a good weed gaurd, adds a little color/scent and works very good with your trailers. Tom

It's all good, differences in opinions are just that. I read what I wrote and stand by it, No disrespect was implied or intended. My personal preference for jig trailers are pork and fish those about 90% of the time with jigs, unfortunately there isn't a good pork rind trailer on the market today, Uncle Josh came out with the Meat series and they don't float. So it's to the butcher shop and making my own. Colors; rarely fish with black-blue during day light because it doesn't work where I fish, good choice for night. Crawdads out west are reddish brown where I fish and that has been a productive color. The bottom line is you will have success with whatever you choose, if you fish it long enough in the right location. Tom

When you catch your first 10# + LMB casting a jig with a 7:1 to 1+ reel, let me know. I have caught over 300 DD LMB casting jigs with 6:3 to 1 reels, and have no need for higher speed reels. Learn to fish a jig effectively...speed kills jig presentations and your mind set/concentration when properly fishing jigs. If I thought a high speed reel would improve my fishing, I would own them. Tom