February 7, 2012
I've started my offseason tackle organization substantially later than normal this year. Being a confirmed procrastinator, I will further delay the process of figuring out what needs to be trashed, repaired or replaced by blogging about little oddities that I find along the way.
Last year's New Year's resolution was to fish a jig more but my follow-through sucked. I caught some fish on the old leadhead, mostly pitching and flipping the little Lintner jig from Omega Custom Tackle and once again in the fall swimming a little Brovarney version from Cheeseland. Then in Brazil we caught most of our peacocks, including our two biggest, on beefed-up hair jigs fished like jerkbaits. Nevertheless, I have to admit that the jig still hasn't attained "go-to" status for me.
There were plenty of situations over the past 12 months when I might have been able to improve my catch by switching to a jig but elected to stick to a creature bait or a Senko instead. Accordingly, the jig boxes remain only a semi-comfortable zone for me. Ideally that will change in 2012. Accordingly I'm taking a mulligan on my 2011 vows and will try again. That has forced me to go through my jig collection to try and really get a sense of when and how I'm going to fish them, which in turn has necessitated getting rid of the ones that aren't top-of-the-heap quality. At the same time, I also plan to add some, including the Zero Gravity Jigs pictured here, from North Carolina's Custom Lures Unlimited.
So much of the jig trade over the past few years has involved an effort to pack more punch into a smaller package, primarily through the use of tungsten, but CLU owner Kelly Barefoot has gone in the opposite direction, making a jighead that is less dense so that the bait will fall more slowly. In the shallow water I prefer that could be deadly, especially when the fish will not respond to a fast fall. Kelly's hand-built cranks are deadly and his attention to detail on his custom paint jobs is tremendous, so I have no doubt that his jigs will be every bit as good.
