Fishing tip of the week

Fishing Tip of the Week

Tuesday, 13 June 2023 12:06

Jigging spoon
When the water gets hot, and the bass are looking for oxygen, looking for cooler water or just suspending, nothing duplicates that results of a jiggling spoon. What makes it even better than most realize is it’s bait that even the most inexperienced angler can use and be successful. You can present the bait with long casts or drop it over the edge of the boat and just jig it up and down.

There are a few things you need to prepare for when using a jigging spoon. If you use heavy one-oz. spoons, they have big hooks and snag everything on the bottom, and when you get one stuck into a stump, well, it becomes a bottom decoration. The next thing to be prepared for is, if you cast it hard and snap your cast, it will break your line fairly easily, so hook it up on braid so you’ll have enough strength in the line to keep it from snapping off. Braid also gives you a fair chance of being able to pull the spoon off a snag on the bottom and retrieve it from hang-ups. Many times, just popping the line will get it off the bottom structure.

Another key to using a jigging spoon is to fish it with a fast speed reel, like a 7:1:1 reel, or faster, and rig it on at least a heavy rod where the tip strength aids the hook set when you’re fishing it. Catching up to the fall speed of a heavy spoon requires the fast reel to catch up to the drop speed; it also allows you to be in position quickly to set the hook when needed in a retrieve.

The key to catching a fish when struck on a jigging spoon is snapping the spoon off the bottom, and when you do that, the spoon falls quickly back to the bottom. This is when you generally get hit, and the reel and rod must support the hook-set, so rod strength and reel speed to catch up to the spoon is very important. There is no read technique to jigging; it is nothing more than snapping it up and letting it fall, with the spoon doing all the work. The back and forth fall of a spoon is a great reaction bait and will catch fish!

-Captain Mike Gerry