Football Jigs - How To Fish

There is a lure in my tacklebox that I've caught a lot of big fish on, and that's a football jig. What is a football jig? A football jig is different than your regular flipping jig. It's a football-shaped lead, okay, and it's meant for casting. It's not meant for flipping or skipping under docks. It's an open-water type jig. And I'm going to give you some really good tips on that, how I like to rig it up.

First of all, I like a heavy jig. Three-quarter ounce is most of the time what I fish with. Sometimes I go half if it's a little bit hangy-uppy down there or a little bit more covered, I'll go to a half, but most of the time three-quarter ounce because I want that jig to get to the bottom and stay on the bottom. That's the most important thing.

Line choice. I like the P-Line 100% fluorocarbon, 15 pound. It's pretty much what I fish with all the time. Sometimes I'll go to 12 if I'm in real deep water, but if I'm in, say, 20 feet or less, 15. If I'm in 20 feet or more, I'm going to go 12. That smaller diameter gets that bait down on the bottom a little bit easier and keeps it down there.

I like to rig it up on a seven-foot, this is my jig-and-worm rod, TCS Okuma, I like to rig it up on that. It's a seven-foot heavy, a great action for a football jig. It's long enough so that you can get those long casts.

I like a high-speed reel. This is an Okuma Helios, 8.1. Because I'm making those long casts, a lot of times 15 or even 12-pound line, I need to gather up a lot of line when I set the hook. I like a high-speed reel. That's real important.

Now, colors. Pretty much, I fish green pumpkins, watermelons, crayfish imitating type colors. Black and blue, very seldom. Maybe if I'm in some real stained water, I'll throw a black and blue, but most of the time I'm throwing a green pumpkin or a brown and red, whatever crayfish type imitation color that I can find.

The other thing is the type of trailer. This is a little double-tailed trailer right here. Anything works real good. I fish with my Bruiser Crazy Craw a lot. That's a great, great trailer for these football jigs. That's a wonderful trailer. I like that a lot. But a double-tailed trailer is what you really want to focus on, because I don't want one that doesn't have a lot of action. I like a little bit of action on it. Again, you've heard me say it several times, keeping that bait down on the bottom.

So here's what I want to do. I want to make a long cast. I want to find a spot right here where we're sitting in about 10 feet of water. We're going to be casting on this ledge right here. There's a shoal marker. I'm going to make a long cast with this football jig. See how far that thing throws? That's awesome, isn't it? Golly, that thing went 50 yards, literally. I'm going to let it sink down to the bottom and watch my line, watch my line. I'm going to wait until that bait gets down to the bottom. It's still sinking. I'm watching. It just hit the bottom, I just felt the line.

Okay, when that happens, I'm going to drag this jig kind of like a Carolina rig. I'm not hopping it, I'm not jigging it, I'm not shaking it. I'm basically just dragging it back to the boat. Drag it, drag it. I'm not reeling, I'm just dragging it, and then I reel up my slack. Bait's not moving when I do that, bait's not moving, it's sitting dead still. Drag it again. The reason I like to drag it, I can feel. I don't know if you can see my tip, but my tip's hitting all kinds of things. Boom-boom-boom-boom, boom-boom-boom. See it bouncing, bouncing, bouncing? And what that's doing when it's bouncing like that, it's making noise down there on the bottom. It's making noise, it's kicking up dirt.

Again, what are we trying to imitate here? What type of baitfish are we imitating with this football jig? We're imitating a crayfish, and what does a crayfish do? It crawls along the bottom and tries to hide under rocks, and that's what I'm doing with that football jig.

So again, heavy jig, and drag it. Drag it on the bottom, get the right sized line, and you'll catch a lot of fish. And you'll catch big ones on this technique. We'll see you guys.