Over the next two or three weeks we’re going to talk about jig design and selecting the right design for the job at hand. Jigs aren’t all that expensive in the grand scheme of things, but they do cost money. There’s no reason to buy a bunch of them that won’t work for what you do when you go fishing.
Round heads
This is one of the most common designs. The standard round head has been around forever, and for good reason. It’s very effective, especially on shaky head rigs, and we all know that a shaky head is a really good lure if you want to put a few bass in your livewell.
It’s my belief that the round head is effective because it falls in a wide circle with a kind of wobble or shimmy. It’ll come through cover reasonably well when you rig it Texas style either by using a model with an offset hook or by using one with a spring-type worm keeper.
If there’s a disadvantage to it, it’s that it has a tendency to lie on its side. That makes the worm lay flat on the bottom.
Some manufacturers have tried to remedy this by slicing off the bottom of the ball. This makes it round on top and flat on the bottom. The advantage here is that you get the circular fall and the shimmy. And, supposedly, the flat bottom lets the worm stand straight up.
I say “supposedly” because I doubt that really works very well. It might work when you drag the jig along the bottom — the worm will stand up on a round head when it’s moving, too — but when you stop it it’s not going to sit flat unless the lake bottom is flat and unless it’s positioned flat when you stop it. Those two things don’t happen that often.
I fish the totally round design almost all of the time. If I want the worm to stand up, I rig my shaky head with a floating worm.
Football head
The football head was very popular at one time, and it still is in some circles. It’s good when you want to cover a mostly open bottom. It’ll kick up a fuss as it moves along. It is not designed, however, for heavy cover applications. It’ll hang every time.
I don’t fish with football head jigs anymore. There are a couple of alternatives that I think work better. They’re basically jigs that do the same thing as a football head but without the cover problems.
The first one is the Strike King Jointed Structure jig. It’s similar to the Gene Larew Biffle Hardhead. Basically it’s a jig with a loop of wire molded in it with a hook attached to that loop of wire. I’m a fan of the Strike King version because it seems to come through cover better but still makes a fuss over an open bottom.
I know there are some versions of this design out there that attach the hook to the loop with a split ring. I’m not a fan, despite their one obvious advantage. I’ll tell you why next week.
