Pro angler Harvey Horne of Arkansas got the best possible introduction to a swinging jig-head — fishing as a co-angler behind Tommy Biffle, the angler who introduced the technique to the world at large, on Oklahoma’s Fort Gibson Lake. The best possible teacher, on a perfect venue, and Horne almost threw it all away.
“Tommy was winning a lot of money at the time and I was fortunate enough to draw him,” Horne recalled. He saw the damage it could do as Biffle went on to make the Top 10 in that 2015 Bassmaster Open, and vowed to integrate it into his game plan. “I went out to fish it and lost 20 of them in my first two trips, and it quickly fell out of my arsenal.” But only for a while.
Horne reconsidered his divorce from the swing heads as more and more money continued to be won on them close to home and out on tour. He experimented and eventually figured out that that he’d been fishing it in the wrong areas.
“The rock was too rough,” he said. “It excels in gravel and even sand — and it’ll catch fish sometimes when other presentations won’t.”
There’s something about the click-clack of the presentation and the amount of water that it covers that makes it deadlier than other baits at times — and that makes the risk of losing the baits worth the possible rewards.
