First jigs

[bdorman]

I hope the fish aren't too picky 'cause this is what will be offered on the menu once the weather begins cooperating.



I think I've used too much material and probably made them a little longer than they should be. But since I've got 69 jig heads left...and only lose about 10 jigs in an entire season...I've got lots of room to play. BTW, they are 1/8 oz with sickle hooks.

90% of my time is spent trolling and the other 10% casting (my home lake has very little structure so there's not much vertical jigging). Any recommendations for trolling and casting are much appreciated, along with other comments/criticisms.

[PA_Slabs]

Nice work. I have to guess that this isn't the 1st time you've been behind a vice tho!!!

[skiptomylu]

Not bad for your first and personally unless you fishing for bream I wouldn't worry about the length. I know lot of guys do, but I have never and do mean never had trouble with the length of my tails with crappie. Lots of customers say the same thing as well.

Good job!

Skip

[TreednNC]

Looks good to me, are those asprin heads with the spinners? Id say youve seen it done a time or two, or you're just joshin about it being your first time lol

Not bad for your first and personally unless you fishing for bream I wouldn't worry about the length. I know lot of guys do, but I have never and do mean never had trouble with the length of my tails with crappie. Lots of customers say the same thing as well.

Good job!

Skip

Skip I know I commented in the other first thread about length so I'll bite on this one. His are about the length I like. I'll admit, I never have much issue with tail length with keeper + size fish, but every now and then we hit a school that has some smaller crappie in it, and it never fails, they nip just like bream. We trimmed the tails and immediately starting catching them, even though they were throw backs.

So yeah, it really has no issue with catching keeper fish, just got aggrivating missing the small fish lol. These same fish, or at least class of fish will go through a time where they will put constant downward pressure on a tightlined minnow, we'd miss them...finally we'd let them take the rod down and hold for 30 seconds or more...only to get them to the top and they spit the minnow out. Just sucking on it, and the minnow wouldnt have a scale on it, not one. We call them, and affectionately so, peckerheads.

The good thing about marabou is it's self correcting. The fish, if you can keep the jig that long, will eventually let you know how long the tail needs to be lol

[Redman]

Nicely Done for first ties. Keep practicing and don't quit now. you got a good eye for tying and will be a good tier in no time. The top two will take fish here at my home lake any time.

Redman

[dblevens]

Only see one problem with em...


They're on the counter and not in the water. Look very good.

[bdorman]

Thanks for the comments guys. Yeah, these are my first ties although I've watched so many youtube videos that I feel like I've been doing it for years.
Skip- nice to hear that tail length isn't crucial because I understand that trimming the tails is a no-no.
Tree- I'm not sure what you call the jighead style. It's like a round-ball jighead, but with flat insets for the eyes. I got them from Ronnie Carpenter, a sponsor here on crappie.com. I superglued on some plastic 3-D eyes instead of taking the time to paint eyes.
dblevens - I drove by the lake this morning and there was actually some open water, so these might see some action sooner than I thought! Not this weekend though since it's going to be in the 30s.

One thing that really helped was using a thin, clear straw to hold the marabou. I had a lot of trouble holding the marabou where I wanted it on the first one (the black one on the bottom; that's why it's marabou is wetted and flattened). So I pulled the marabou through a 2" clear drinking straw (actually more like a drink stirring straw) with a bobbin thread puller. It allowed me to cut the marabou exactly the length I wanted and position it on the hook much more accurately than I could with my fingers. The thing I enjoy about anything new, is figuring out how to solve problems. I still need to figure out something for the deer hair - the straw trick doesn't work for deer hair and it's even harder to hold than marabou. A hackle pliers splays the hair out all over the place. Suggestions?

[Redman]

I have done a lot of bucktail the one thing that I do is to have long thumb nails. Hold it with the thumb nail of the left hand against the first knuckle or I should say the crease of the first knuckle of the pointer finger of the same hand. Do it gentle and you can position it any where on the hooks that you want. Here is a example of what I do with some of the bucktail.



Redman

[bdorman]

Wow Redman, those are really sweet. Thanks for the tip; I'll give it a try although I'm not sure about the long thumbnail. I do a lot of work out in the yard so I tend to keep my fingernails short.

I'm also thinking that if I tie a few turns around the hair immediately after I cut it from the deerskin, it might be more manageable.

[Redman]

One more tip would be to use southern deer tail. The Northern White Tail or Bucktail is very hollow and is a bit of a job to tie. If you get a Northern Bucktail use the hair from the lower part of the tail it is finer and not as hollow. The Big old Swamp Bucks had tails that you could use for spun hair bugs from base to tip. Beautiful tails but hard to work with.

Redman