Our Top 5 Jig Tactics For Big Bass

Moynagh favors 20-pound monofilament for roller jigging with a 3/4-ounce All-Terrain Moynagh Rock Jig, making long casts with a 7 1/2-foot flippin' stick. He matches with a 5.3:1 ratio reel, to stymie any inclination to move the jig too fast.

On the West Coast, lunker hunter Mike Long also favors a football head for working deep flats and drops in the 12- to 40-foot range. He is credited with catching 27 bass over 13 pounds on jigs. Long likes pork trailers on his ProLine football jigs, and like Moynagh, he retrieves the jig at a painstakingly slow pace, particularly in cold water. In the tradition of "Lunker" Bill Murphy, Long stitches his jigs, retrieving just an inch or two of line a minute, interspersed with gentle shaking.

5. HAIR JIGS

Best not to be caught out in fall without a box of hair jigs. A smallmouth favorite in many regions, jigs sporting skirts of bucktail or fox hair are one of most overlooked fall largemouth lures. When the hair-jig bite is on, they outproduce soft plastics or standard jig designs.

Perhaps it's the compact look of the package, as many of the best coldwater baits tend to be small, or perhaps the subtle waving of the natural fibers or the hair's natural buoyancy. When bites get tough to come by in water below 50F, tie on a 1/4-ounce hair jig and slowly work the edges of persistent green weeds, letting the lure drop into holes and then sit for a minute or more before giving it a little shake.

Back hair jigs with a downsize craw like the 3-inch Berkley Power Craw with the last 1/2 inch of the tail bitten off, or a #101 Uncle Josh chunk. Both trailer types add buoyancy for a slow fall, to bulk up the package and to give bass something succulent to chew on while they wait for you to feel a bite. At times, there will be merely a feeling of weight on the end of your line. More eager fish, however, give the little lure a classic pop that's easy to feel or see.

Light line (10 or 12-pound-test mono) enhances the motion of small hair jigs and is sufficient to set hooks and land big bass in the thinning cover of fall, as they aren't nearly as sporty as just a month earlier. Fluorocarbon lines have shown great promise in hair jigging, as they have with finesse jigs. I prefer medium-power baitcasting tackle, but spinning rods also work fine in these conditions.

One last hair-jig technique deserves mention, though its application isn't as broad as some listed above. But wherever large gizzard shad are key forage, the Preacher Jig can be a deadly tool. It's a 5- to 6-inch, 1/2- to 3/4-ounce offering of bucktail and duck or chicken hackle that looks like something for striped bass. Mann's Bait Company has adopted the name, Preacher Jig, originally used to describe the lure designed by Reverend Bill Conine of Georgia, now a custom rod maker.

Cast the big white hair jig out over deep structure, such as channel bends or submerged humps, and retrieve like a crankbait, but with a subtle lifting and falling action, as you might impart to a marabou crappie jig. When a big bass inhales it, the rod just loads up and the battle is on. This, like all the jig tactics reviewed here, is a big-fish tactic.