There's a contest running over on the YumaBassman.com
(http://yumabassman.com) forum, where members post tips about jig use, and
the winner will receive an assortment of jigs by Siebler Custom Baits.
Probably the most useful jig tips will involve ways and places to use these
multipurpose lures. Below is a commentary that I posted on that forum; maybe
some of you won't have a chance to read it there but would be interested.



(If you have prize-winning tips you are willing to post there, there's a
very good chance that you could walk away with the gift pack in plenty of
time to use them this season. And you might pick up an idea or two that will
improve your jig-fishing productivity.) Here's what I wrote:

B52 survival kits issued to pilots in WWII contained, among other
essentials, a bucktail jig made with whitetail deer fur. I have been told
they made the list because they were so versatile, compact, inexpensive, and
productive.

Old Bomber lures (with hooks removed) were crib toys for me. I used them to
represent boats, rockets, fish, or cars as a toddler. Jigs, however, were
never considered playthings; they were clearly fishing lures. tools, not
toys. There were always several bucktail jigs with sharp hooks on Dad's
workbench and tied on his fishing poles in the closet. They made dandy (and
inexpensive) stocking stuffers for the young'uns.

My uncles poured and tied their own ball-head jigs using hair and fur from a
variety of sources, and they kept us well-supplied. Uncle Al, who lived a
mile or so from us, taught me to build my own jigs using his lead smelter,
molds, thread, fur, and model paint. (This was before EPA, too, and I don't
recall a whole lot of ventilation in the basement room where we melted and
poured our lead. might explain a lot to those of you who know me well.)

In my teen years, my own homemade survival kit in a little, tin Band-aid box
accompanied me whenever I went afield hunting or backpacking the remote
trails of the Appalachians or Cumberland Plateau. That kit included one of
Uncle Ed's bucktail jigs, along with two tiny few doll-eye jigs for trout
and panfish.

Without weedguards, our homemade jigs were prone to hanging up around brush.
But with only the cost of hooks and a little time invested in them (deer
and dog hair were in plentiful supply, and salvaged lead from used tire
weights), we were willing to sacrifice a few jigs in order to probe the
thickest weed beds and buckbrush or brush piles that we though might hold
lurking bass. I learned to fish them with a deft touch on the gravel beds
and rocky-bottom lakes and streams of East Tennessee to keep them shuffling
along the bottom without falling down into crevasses.

Usually we fished them bare, but we occasionally threaded on a six-inch,
black plastic worm to increase their bulk and appeal. This was long before I'd
ever heard the term "Texas-rig," and unless worms were used as jig trailers,
we retrieved worms weightless, rigged with two hooks behind a string of
beads and a propeller. (I remember fishing such rigs in the Everglades
canals below Okeechobee on trips to visit grandparents.) Partnering worms
with jigs turned them into an entirely different class of baits, and we
learned to fish them differently, too.

Sauger fishing below Douglass Dam; smallmouth-holding gravels beds on Watts
Bar; Ft. Loudon Lake riprap banks and laydowns for largemouth bass and
sunnies; Melton Hill Lake bluffs, the Holston River below dams at
Rogersville and Jefferson City; mangrove islands and oyster bars for snook,
sea trout and redfish near Matlacha Pass in Florida; streams that ran out of
the Smokey Mountains. jigs produced in every type of water and under all
conditions. You just had to learn to vary your presentation and technique to
match the conditions.

Today, the variety of styles, shapes, sizes, and weights available to jig
fishermen open up all kinds of alternatives. I'm looking forward to reading
how other forum members rig and retrieve their jigs.