Jigs are here to stay. So long as people pursue fish, weight-and-bait tactics will exist. And the whole idea hasn’t changed much since the beginning. True, Fred Flintstone used rocks to get his line down to the bassasauruses. Nuts and bolts comprised the next huge advancement in sinkers. Then some genius decided to use lead, not the heaviest or densest element, but the most commonly available that’s not radio-active or in a liquid state.

But some later genius first put the lead right on the hook. Now there was a guy with some real Albert in his veins. He knew that the farther the weight was from the bait, the less control he had over what his bait was doing. Rigging with weights, he decided, compromised his sense of feel, since fish could move the bait toward the sinker without being felt.

We still use rigs, but maybe not so often as Fred Flintstone did. Rigs will fool a few persnickety fish, after you fail to catch any on jigs. Jigs are precise tools, and a classic presentation for walleyes since the 1950s, when monofilament lines appeared. What makes a jig classic, however, isn’t the fact that it’s been on the shelves for the past 40 years. A classic is a jig that fits cleanly in a well-defined, well-traveled niche. It functions the way it’s designed to work, and it hooks well. A classic is a jig that works. But that doesn’t mean it’s here to stay.

Today’s classics, however, are even better. The advent of advanced tempering processes in the past five years brought better hooks to the scene—thinner, sharper, stronger hooks that sink in quickly to the set and won’t bend out on big fish. Thinner-diameter steel and smaller barbs allow easier penetration. In the past two or three years, many jig makers have worked with hook manufacturers to design premium hooks for jigs. The results are right before your eyes.

But jigs need more than sharp hooks. Head designs have evolved through the years into task-specific tools for walleyes. Though, for the most part, jigs are still just sinkers on the hook, little differences can mean a lot some days. Choose the right tool for the job and the process of presenting baits and hooking fish becomes much easier.

Leeches And Crawlers

Slip floats demand a small jig. Leeches are the most commonly used bait, though other baits work well under the right circumstances. A small jig allows the leech to move and swim more freely.

Ideal jigs for leeches are 1/32- and 1/16-ounce sizes. The problem with jigs this small, until recently, has been hook size. A jig with a hook smaller than a #6 has too small a gap for walleyes. It bounces free on the hookset, unable to penetrate and hold in the tough mouth of a walleye. In most cases, jigs this size were designed for panfish, with panfish hooks. Others that size have collars for attaching plastics, which is a waste of lead on a slip-float jig.

For the past several years, Jack’s Jigs have offered 1/32-ounce ballheads in eye-popping colors with #6 and #4 hooks. Now Gopher Tackle has introduced the Leech Head jig with #6 or #4 Mustad Accu-Point hooks. Most of the lead on the Leech Head is below the shank of the hook, with the eye tight to the head, to further increase the gap. Collarless jigs are classics for presenting leeches on slip floats, and larger versions of these same designs work well for pitching crawlers.

Jig-crawler options, however, are almost unlimited. Tiny segments of crawlers add scent and taste to plastic combos, and larger segments work nicely in place of plastic on jigs with collars. Long-shank jigs such as the Wazp Perfection Jig and Owner Ultrahead in 1/8-, 3/16-, and 1/4-ounce sizes excel for crawlers. It’s easier to hold a crawler on the jig while pitching with a long-shank hook, and the hook is back far enough to nab a few short biters. The Perfection Jig has a sharp three-way barb that does a good job of holding the crawler against the head.

Alternatives and new designs provide cues to aid in triggering finicky walleyes. The Bad Dog Whiz Kid is a vertical prop jig. Its teardrop design falls bend-first with the eye straight up. Unlike other prop jigs, the propeller turns or flashes on the drop, providing a temptingly slow target with leeches under a slip float. The Wazp Flicker Jighead, with its flat, wavy design, flutters on the drop, another good float-duty tool.

Pitching leeches on light jigs requires a relatively short shank and larger gap. A 1/16- to 1/8-ounce Bait-Rigs Slo-Poke, with its elongated head, drops slow, fishes slow, works well through weeds, and accentuates the action of a writhing leech. Many other jigs work well, too. Leeches fish better on light heads with short- to medium-shank jig hooks.

Minnows

Hooking minnows on a jig requires a larger gap between hook point and jig eye. Two classic styles have emerged—compact and long-shank. Today, these two styles have evolved into designs specifically for certain types of cover and conditions like current.

The classic compact head is the Northland Fire-Ball. This wide-gap short-shank hook was unique to this head for years before other manufacturers jumped on the bandwagon. The design allows sufficient room for a big minnow with space left over for some segment of a walleye’s upper jaw. With the hook running into the minnow’s mouth and out behind the head, and the minnow pushed against the jig, the Fire-Ball typically hooks short biters without a stinger, but a special eye for attaching a stinger is supplied under the hook. The bend in the shank is so close that it holds the minnow tight to the head, creating a compact package.

Like the Fire-Ball, Gopher Tackle’s Bait Jig, or short hook jig, also allows the minnow to hinge closer to the weight of the jig. This head is slung low, with most of the weight beneath the shank, and the shorter eye creating a wider gap.

Long-shank jigs, by comparison, present a different profile. The length creates a hinge effect, which may or may not appear natural, but it lightens the business end of the package, causing the longer hook to pivot toward inhaling fish much easier. Head shapes vary extensively. A wedge head on the Wazp Perfection Stand-Up jig, with its Eagle Claw Lazer Sharp Tri-Bend hook, works well through weededges and stands on bottom, delivering the minnow in an aggressive tail-up fashion. The Wazp Perfection Jig also is flat on the bottom, but the long-shank hook lies on the same plane as the head, laying the minnow belly to the bottom, which excels with a sweep-drag retrieve.

Plastics

Here are the classics among classics. Most jigs on the market longer than four or five years have barbed collars for attaching plastics. Yesterday’s conventional wisdom dictated that jigs with barbed collars worked with or without plastics, with or without bait, and they still do. Specialization replaces that notion, however minor the difference.

What could be more classic than a Lindy-Little Joe Fuzz-E-Grub or a Mister Twister? Those two plastic bodies, the candy lozenge with marabou tail and the Twister Tail, are the prototypical walleye producers of all time. One works well with bait, the other does fine on its own. Both heads are characterized by compromise hook lengths best matched with small to moderate minnows or with exposed hooks and plastics alone.

A slight variation of this style is the Northland Lip-Stick Jig, another classic. The Lip-Stick, with its stand-up head, presents minnows in a different posture. Tentacles on the tube-style plastic body sway and splash color around the profile of a lively minnow. Worked on bottom, the Lip-Stick presents minnows tail-up, spelling vulnerable to a bottom-oriented walleye.

When failure to buy enough minnows runs headlong into a hot bite, walleye fishermen predominantly reach for one of two plastic bodies—a shad or a curly tail. Shad bodies work exceptionally well for walleyes in clear water at night, in rivers during the day, and in a host of other situations. These minnow imitators are best fished on long-shank jigheads. Wedge head standup-style jigs are a good choice. The Perfection Stand-Up, with its premium 2/0 hook, protrudes through a thick shad body with plenty of gap left for setting the hook.

Head Designs

The most basic jig design is the classic round head with a medium-shank or medium-long-shank hook. The Lindy Fuzz-E-Grub and Jack’s Jigs come to mind. Al Lindner prefers versions of the round head most of the time. “About 75 percent of my jigging is with round heads,” Al says. “The other 25 percent involves head shapes that provide an advantage in some kind of cover. The aspirin head, for example, is a worthwhile addition to the arsenal for pitching into jumbles of rock.”

Flattened on the sides, jigs shaped like an aspirin pull out of almost any crevice they fall into—a classic example of a design well suited to a particular niche. In fact, no other design fishes so well in broken rock. Currently, the few commercially available aspirin heads include those marketed by Bass ‘N Bait and Cabela’s. The Fle-Fly that also has a narrow profile, though the sides are slightly rounded, fishes well in rocks.

Current provides unique problems. Round heads, a good compromise in any situation, expose more surface area to current than do bullet heads. Getting down quicker means more bottom coverage, and bullet-head designs like the Blue Fox Foxee dig into current a little better. For deep water and heavy current, narrow, deep-bodied jigs that turn a thin face into the current work best. Examples include the Lindy Jowl Jig and Jack’s River Jig.

In weeds, look for eyes that won’t grab and hooks that hide, unless you want to rip weeds, which at times provides a great trigger (in which case, a plain ball head typically works best). The hook on the Bait Rigs Odd’ball can be fished exposed or hidden in a plastic body (including shad bodies) after cutting a slit in the belly for the hook. The unique eye on the Odd’ball is less likely to grab weeds than most other eye designs.

The Odd’ball stays upright on the bottom, like a standup jig. For presenting minnows with a dragging retrieve, the Odd’ball creates a unique tipping, rocking action. Other designs that work well with dragging retrieves include the Jig-A-Whopper Competition Jig and the Blue Fox Foxee.

Circling jigs, such as the Northland Air-Plane and Systems Tackle Flyer, are designed to swim on the drop. Typically used as an attractor jig for ice-fishing, several horizontal presentations with these jigs work for walleyes, too.