An Overlooked Material

The Dollar Tree dollar store chain often carries metallic shredding in silver, gold and red. They use this stuff as a filler for gift bags. The brand name is Voila.

I've tied jigs using the silver as a skirt on small 1/16 jigheads from wal mart. I first powder painted the jigheads red and tied the silver on with red thread. Each shredding strand it tied on, doubled back and clipped at an angle just past the hook, in effect making a vertical fantail that closely follows the curve of the hook.....after tying on the strands, 3 or 4 to a side each doubled back, I add one strand of red on each side. This red stripe simply goes down the middle of the fan. So far, it's caught 20 species of fish, 5 saltwater and 15 freswater, including bream and crappie. When tied, the jig lays flat on its side and I keep them in the small ziplock baggies. As the fish mangle them, they seem to do better, but after use, I dry them out and keep them in the baggies...just to re-shape them a little without pressing.

These little jigs are great for winter trouting as well as ice fishing. Year round it's turned out to be a winner.

Would like to see a photo of these sounds interesting.....and I'm all over the dollar tree thing they have lots of good stuff in there best place to buy you small batteries like AA or d cells

Good tip - need a pic.

Like to buy tinsel after Xmas when it goes on sale. Got a bunch of halo stuff last year, really cheap.

Stuff I found at the dollar store:

Hair Extensions $1 each - make great flash material

http://i175.photobucket.com/albums/w...n/PICT0003.jpg

Fuzzy Wuzzy $1 each - make great body or tail material for grubs, etc.

http://i175.photobucket.com/albums/w...n/PICT0004.jpg

I bought some of the foil strips in red, silver, and green too. No pics, but they resemble 1/8 inch wide icicles.

I love finding cheap stuf that works. About 15 years ago I got into tying from a garage sale purchase of a tying setup, the vise you had to use a screw driver to clamp the hook! Think I spent 5 bucks all told: vise, bobbin, various small tools, 2 bags of feathers and a book. Got me "hooked!"

I have recently posted about using the fiber from discount store pipe cleaners for dubbing. Those jigs are on the right.

My kids made some tree ornaments for their teachers and the string for hanging was a braided gold material. I kept the leftovers and made the ones on the left. I have a little leftover, but plan to go out looking for something similar.

Sorry for the blury picts, guess hand not as steady as I thought.