I have a few bass jigs that I cut off the weed guards. Then I'll rig my trailer weedless on the jig. I seem to have a better hook up ratio this way. Just coincidence, or does anyone else do this?

I make my own jigs and include the weedguard except on swim jigs. I fish too much wood and rocks to go without it.

That's an interesting idea. I might try that with one of my jigs to see if that improves my hookup ratio.

You can cut the weedguard off then use a hitchhiker trailer keeper on the eye of the jig and turn it into basically a big shakyhead. 

I trim the guard back, but I don't remove it completely.  I cut the guard back just enough so that when you hold it down, it clears the hook tip.

Removing weed guards from some style jig heads may not work due to the hook eye location like flat eye hooks for example. Weed guard can be fish guards and prevent you getting a hook set and you should only use a jig with a guard when fishing cover to prevent snagging. When fishing in rocky areas or sparse cover areas a weed guard isn't required.

I have been fishing jigs without a traditional weed guard for a long time and wrote 2 articles for In-Fisherman (1986 Rare a Chance for a World Record, 1995 Horizontal Jigging) discussion how to fish jigs using soft plastic worm for a weed guard by attaching the worm section to the jig hook eye and protecting to hook point.

Where and how I fish jigs, using soft plastic has worked good for me. Today you have the Hitchhiker and Owner CPS springs that make attaching a soft plastic for a weed guard easy.

Tom

I been thinking of trimming them but Sieberts Outdoors jigs seem to be better than the others.

center based weed guards always have and always will cause hooking problems.  the why is because they will always force the hook to a flatter hooking angle.  can you catch fish with a center based weed guard??  sure, but you will also lose some due to the flatter hooking angle, and there will be times that the jig will pop out of the mouth with the hook flat, and not ever hook anything.  the good news is there is better technology out there to fix that problem.

 

bo

I trim the weed guard back and fan it out before throwing it. I think the fanning helps my hookup ratio. I throw jigs into a lot of wood on beaver huts so I need a weed guard.

The jig head design has a lot to do with how well the jig will perform and there are dozens to choose from

The original jigs were ball heads and on slack line the jig would roll over allowing the hook to snag. The football head was a elongated ball head to help resolve rolling over on slack line and it works.

Both the ball and football heads snagged in brush and weeds, the Arkie head resolved snagging by shaping the head so it would slide over limbs without getting the nose snagged and added a fiber center weed guard.

The Arkie became the bass jig as we know it for fishing cover,

The *** jig has a new designed head that allows it to slide thru rocks and wood very well and eliminated the weed guard problems, get it a try where heavy wood cover is an issue.

Tom