Line sinker or jig head for fishing under a float?

I fish live bait - night crawlers, crickets & mealworms mostly. And very shallow, very stained water sometimes, 2' or less along bayou banks and small lakes.

I grew up with the tried and true setup...float(slip or push button), crimped lead line sinker and hook. It works just fine except when I get in the really shallow water. I've always relied on my float sitting up correctly when under the tension of the line sinker to make sure I was off the bottom, but the 6" difference between line weight and hook makes this method not usable in shallow water. Often my float would sit up correctly and my bait would be sitting on the bottom.

I was thinking of tipping a small jig head with the live bait of my choice and giving that a try tomorrow. This would allow me to know when my bait was truly off the bottom regardless of depth. But, I was wondering how bream react to a jig attached to a live bait. I know they can be very picky and spit out a bait if the smallest thing didn't feel right. Would using a jig cause me to get fewer bites than just using a plain hook? If I did use a jig head, should I stick with a plain lead head, or throw some color out there along with the live bait on the tip?

Thanks.

I switched from your standard to tiny jigheads either inserted in tubes or with a tiny stinger style bait both tipped with gulp maggots. Probably will not buy crickets or worms again. Also tip with grass shrimp if I can find em.

Thanks for the reply. After going through a few other threads, looks like I'm kind of beating a dead horse here...should have done a little more reading and I would have answered my own question before posting this well-covered issue. Ha!

No sweat. If people never asked a repeated question, there would be nothing to talk about. Pretty much everything has been covered somewhere.

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Originally Posted by huntinslabs

No sweat. If people never asked a repeated question, there would be nothing to talk about. Pretty much everything has been covered somewhere.

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Yep. As Solomon said, "There's nothing new under the son."

I will just add that a big advantage a jig has over the bare hook is that a gill will almost never "swallow" a jig like they often do with a bare hook. That's a big reason I've been using jigs more.