All About Jig Heads

My name is Gene Jensen with BassResource.com. This is the first of a series of videos that I'm going to make that are totally dedicated to jig fishing. So let's go ahead and dive right on in and talk about the different jig heads.

Let's start off with one of my favorites – the Arkie head. I'm going to show it up close. This is an arkie head. I want you to notice a few things on these jigs, notice the angle of the eye as it comes off of the hook and also notice the direction that the eye is pointed. You've got some that are pointed across ways, and you've got some that are pointing up and down. We'll talk about the difference and the reason those are the way they are.

You select your jig heads according to what you're going to fish. Let's just go ahead and talk about this Arkie head. The Arkie head, if you look at it closely, it's got a nice little concave or a little rounded bottom, and it's fairly flat on the bottom. This is the ideal skipping head. If you're going to skip underneath docks and things like that and you're not really good at it or you've never tried it, this is a good one to start with.

I'm going to dive in with another video totally about Arkie heads, and it's going to be about skipping jigs and I will use this one and I tell you everything that you need to know about getting started skipping. But that's your Arkie head.

The next one is an all terrain jog sent to me by Seibert Outdoors. He makes some great jigs, and this is one of my favorite ones that he makes. Basically, it's an all terrain jog is what it's called. I like how he leaves his weed guards really long so you can trim them off and do what you want to with them. We'll talk about trimming here in just a minute. But I want you to look at the line tie, notice it's going the opposite direction as the arkie head. What that is for, and also look at the, notice that the lead is molded around the eye and that makes that jig almost entirely weedless, and it's very difficult to get this thing snagged up. You can get any jig snagged up, but this one will get snagged up a lot less.

It's got a great hook. It's got your little barb to keep your trailer on, and, like I said, it will go anywhere.

Now let's go into, oh everybody's favorite, a football head. It's been several years. Something started several years ago when Mike McClellan won a tournament out on Clark's Hill, and he was using a football head and everybody else was using all kinds of lures but he ended up winning it. But this is a football head, pretty self-explanatory. It looks just like a football. It's really good in rocks. It's not good in rip-rap, which is a whole bunch of boulders and everything along the bank. It's still going to get hung up if you fish it slow in rip-rap. What I like about it is it's almost like a shaky head. You get it into the rocks and you start feeling the rocks, and you just sit there and you shake it and it just wobbles up and down just like this with a skirt on it and the trailer and everything else. You shake it and you let it sit there and you shake it and let it sit there.

That's kind of how Mike was using it. He would pull into these scattered rocks that we have on Clark's Hill, and he'd just sit and he'd shake it and the fish would come down and thump it. Then he'd set the hook.

When it falls, it's got a nice little wobble to it. When you're dragging it on the bottom, it actually wobbles, when you're dragging it. So it's a good bare bottom jig, and it's good in scattered rocks. I don't like to use them in thick rocks.

This is what I like to use in a thick rock, another Siebert Outdoors Jig, and this is a ball-headed jig. This is a light one. Also, people use them as finesse jigs and things like that, and the reason I like the ball-headed jig is it is easier to get out of the rocks when it gets hung up. But if you fish rocks slow, you're going to get hung up. So I fish rocks, like rip-rap and things like that, a little bit fast. I'll keep them bouncing on the bottom, and I'll keep them moving and this thing just seems to come through the rocks a little bit better for me. Once again, got a long weed guard and really nice to trim it up.

A swim jig, another Seibert Jig. Pretty self-explanatory. Look at the line ties. Same thing, it will come through grass so you can use this as a grass jig. Put your skirt on and everything else, and it comes sliding right through the grass. You can yank it out of the grass pretty easy. It cuts its way through. A really good jig head. It really does the job in weeds and sometimes in trees. I don't like to use it in brush, because when you bring it up on brush, it tends to roll just like a spinner bait will, and you're sitting there shaking on the brush and it'll roll and you bring it over and the hooks sitting right there on it. Not a really good wood jig.

Good wood jigs are the Arkie head. Another good wood jig is the my favorite head, this is the one I tie the most for myself, is a rocker head, and Siebert Outdoors also has one like this. It's got a Gamakatsu wide gap hook on it, and when it lands on the bottom, it lands up, straight up just like that so when a fish comes down and grabs it, it's got all the hook in its mouth. Great head. The line tie is not a grass, or the eye of the hook is not a grass hook, so it's not going to do good in the grass. It does good in timber. It does good for flipping and pitching.

That's kind of what you look for with jig heads. Look at the line tie, look at the angle of the eye. There are so many different ones. Everybody's got different angles, different eye turns, different everything, different hooks. There are just numerous numbers of jigs, but pay attention to what they are and use them for what they're best at and enjoy fishing them. Thanks.