Jigging Tactics Today

The Death Dance

Now, the salesmanship part. A minnow that is in trouble, either sick or injured, swims erratically, pumps its tail, flops onto its side, sinks slowly, and recovers only partially, seeming to call out “I can’t swim; I’m not going to make it, but I am still alive.” No rotting corpse here. This is a living, breathing meal, so obviously unable to get away, that big fish are fooled, if you do it right.

In shallow water, a relatively large plastic minnow body can be fished efficiently with no more weight than a plain hook, and perhaps a snap. I also fished them with a short leader intended to prevent bite-offs from pike, using Fenwick’s IronThread Braided Alloy Leader material, which you can tie knots in.

As you lower your minnow just beneath the hole and sink it slowly to a position near the bottom, it can be made to look alive, sitting perpetually on its side and kicking what appear to be its last dying kicks. Being almost neutrally buoyant, it flutters out to the side as you work it. Concentrate and practice, and you’ll begin to believe, because it looks that real.

Fishing near other natural food, like perch and minnows is important, because drawing them up out of hiding to peck at your bait increases the chance that a predator will spot the opportunity to feed. Wood rarely stays long in a hole that doesn’t have other baitfish in it. He works at getting their attention, then draws them as high in the water column as he can, fishing his bait just above them. Before leaving the hole, he also works the bait higher and higher to check for fish closer to the surface.

“Even if I’m in 24 feet of water,” he says, “fishing near the bottom is unproductive compared to being 10 or 15 feet off the bottom. Half of my fish come from maybe halfway between the top and the bottom. In fact, I’m never down on the bottom. I try to draw the baitfish up to my bait. If I go into a black hole (one without baitfish), I don’t stay for more than five minutes if I don’t see a fish.”

This is not the kind of fishing you do when you would rather be taking a nap, because the bait lies straight up and down in the water if you let it come to a rest, looking ridiculous. Motion is what sells it to the fish.

Wood doesn’t have a set routine while working plastic minnows, but instead says, “Be as aggressive or subtle as you want. At the beginning of the day, I usually start out somewhere between subtle and aggressive, just to see what kind of mood the fish are in. If they come in and lazily swim around the bait, I downsize and slow down the presentation.

“When I’m being aggressive with a plastic shad, I get it pointed in a certain direction and pump it out, with maybe three quick pumps (no pause between them), whatever it takes to get it as far out of my line of sight as possible.” (He leans over to demonstrate how he strains to look out to the side and keep an eye on it. He prefers a 10-inch hole.)