December is an exciting time for football. It’s go time on the gridiron, where NFL teams push to secure a playoff spot. There's a similar intensity at your favorite fishing hole, where bass fattened into pigskin shapes by fall-feeding frenzies are ready to pounce on football jigs.
Football jigs produce best when the water temperature is at its extremes, causing bass to huddle around specific spots. But making that happen isn’t just happenstance. It starts with understanding this unique lure’s nuances and how to tweak them to different fishing situations. And it only gets better when you learn how and where to fish them. These four steps will help you accomplish all of that.
Use Your Head
Jigs have a basic design — hook, weight, skirt, and trailer. While most of their action is added through retrieve speed and rod-tip twitches, those parts and pieces finish the job. And much of that responsibility falls on a football jig’s head.
A jig head's size determines how fast it sinks. For example, heavy ones — ½ ounce or greater — sink quickly to deep depths and crash through thick cover such as aquatic vegetation. Its shape determines action. Flat jig heads, for example, act like a parachute, giving your lure a gliding action and slowing its descent. Football jigheads act like bulldozers.
Oblong with its central axis perpendicular to the hook, a football jig head's mass is concentrated forward of the line tie and below the shank. That placement is perfect for two presentations:
- Slow and low: Football jigs do a fantastic crawfish imitation when dragged across a gravel or rock bottom. Slowly sweep your rod to the side, and your jig crawls along the bottom. Its rounded shape forces it to roll over or around any obstruction, adding action.
- Straight down: The weight-forward design sends your jig straight to the bottom as long as the line peels freely from your reel. That keeps your offering on target, whether following a bluff, standing timber, aquatic vegetation stalks, or attempting a precise touchdown on a deep-water spot.
Assemble Your Jig
A football jig’s simple design hides a handful of variables. Change any of them, and your jig does something slightly different. Understand the cause and effect, and you can dial in your jig to where and how you are fishing, increasing the number and size of bites each fishing day in the process.
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Line-tie angle may seem like a small detail, but it shows up big in your football jig’s action. A 90-degree tie will help your jig climb over cover such as rocks. Use a 60-degree tie when you want it to slide, staying in contact with the bottom. Photo by Pete M. Anderson Start with your football jig’s line tie. A circle-shaped wire seems to have a singular straight-forward job — connecting the line to the jig. But its orientation dictates how your jig moves. These are the most popular options:
- 90 degree: Pull on a jig outfitted with this line tie, which is at a right angle to the hook, and it rolls forward, lifting its skirt and trailer in a lifelike manner while helping it climb over snags. The latter is essential when fishing around bottom cover such as rock and wood.
- 60 degree: Pushed toward the jig’s nose, this line tie moves your jig forward. Use it when sliding your jig over a relatively cover-free bottom of sand or gravel. Some are turned sideways, a move some anglers believe adds pulling power, especially when setting the hook.
The skirt adds a lot to your football jig. It creates a profile, helping it mimic important prey such as baitfish, crawfish, and gobies. It also adds action, though how much depends on the material and how it’s tied:
- Living rubber or silicone: These modern materials come in an almost endless selection of colors, making it easy to match any situation. Long and thin, the slightest movement breathes life into them.
- Natural materials: Bucktail and marabou are popular dressings for jigs fished in cold water. Hollow hair and turkey feathers, respectively, add a flowing action, even when your jig is at rest.
- Traditional length: These skirts extend past the hook’s bend, from a fraction of an inch to several inches in the case of mop-style jigs. That creates the bulky profile that many bass prefer in cold water, especially if it’s stained.
- Finesse style: Short and spiked in the front and slightly longer in the back like a mullet haircut, its compact profile creates a quivering action. It’s perfect for pressured bass or the coldest water.
Trailers inject two things into your football jig game. They add action, depending on the styling of their legs. And they change its profile, from bulky to trim. Consider these four:
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No football jig is complete without a trailer. Match yours to the conditions, whether a realistic craw in clear water, twin tail in relatively warm water or chunk any other time. Photo by Pete M. Anderson - Twin tail: With a set of curly tails set in motion by forward or falling movement, it is usually best for covering water or fishing in relatively warm water when your December weather is mild or your local lake has a warm-water discharge from a factory or power plant.
- Craw: These add bulk but not much action. Their realistic profile — some have antennae and eyes— is a bonus when fishing clear water. Leave it a bit longer if you're cutting down a craw worm.
- Chunk: This is the most popular option for football jigs when the water is cold. Their legs have a large surface area that encourages them to flap, even when your jig rests on the bottom.
- Pork: Limited in shapes, colors, and availability, this old-school trailer has a long history of being the choice in cold water. Most of today’s bass haven’t seen it, which is an advantage when fishing in pressured water.
There is one more option for dressing a plain football jig: a spider — or hula — grub. It combines a trailer and skirt in one soft-plastic package. While its bulk comes up short compared to separate skirts and trailers, it will serve you well when conditions call for a finesse offering. And while some combination of black, brown, and green pumpkin is all you’ll need most days for a color choice, these come in various other patterns, with and without flake, allowing you to match the hatch in clear water perfectly.
A weed guard is the final consideration when selecting a football jig. If you're fishing around little to no cover, you can get away without one, which leads to faster and surer hooksets. But you'll want one if bass are tucked among rocks or inside brush or aquatic vegetation. Brush versions offer the most protection. Wire weed guards aren't as widely available but are a better option when cover is sparse.
Choose A Combo
The best football jig is useless unless you can serve it to the bass waiting at your chosen fishing hole. To do that, you'll want a combo tweaked for this presentation.
Baitcasting combos get the nod most often but don’t discount spinning rods for football jigs that weigh 3/8 ounce or less, especially when the water is deep and clear. Regardless of which route you run, here’s what you’ll need:
- Rod: A fast-action rod flexes in the tip, generating accurate casts. It and at least a medium-heavy power contribute to powerful hook sets. While you only have one hook to drive home, your jig may be far from your boat or deep in the depths. So, you still must move a lot of line.
- Reel: Ones that pull plenty of line with each handle turn are best. That quickly removes slack line after you feel a bite and before you set the hook and brings in retrieves that are past the sweet spot in short order, creating time for more presentations during a day. They typically have tall gears, at least 7:1, or a large diameter spool.
- Line: You can try fluorocarbon or monofilament, but braided line will treat you best. Its diameter is a fraction of the other two at comparable pound tests, producing long casts and giving your jig more action. It also has less lift, helping your jig stay on the bottom. Avoid the urge to bulk up pound test. Add a couple of feet of fluorocarbon leader to cut its visibility if clear water makes you extra cautious.
Where To Cast
Versatility is a big reason why jigs are special. They catch bass almost anywhere and under any condition. Football jigs possess that versatility but excel in certain situations, especially when fishing in December.
Bass want a couple of things as the year winds down when faced with some of the coldest water. They include:
- Deep water: Offering insulation from changing weather conditions and an escape from current in some instances, it’s relative to where you’re fishing. It may be 8 to 10 feet in a pool or backwater of a free-flowing river or 20 feet in a Northern natural lake.
- Vertical structure: Swimming up and down takes less effort than going out and back. Bluffs and ledges, for example, allow bass to take advantage of better conditions by rising in the water column and hide from worsening ones by swimming down. While you may catch one on a flat or rock pile on a nice day, chances are almost sure there's a drop nearby, even a short one.
- Hard cover: Search out structure first, then dial into hard cover on it. Bass often use wood and rock in natural and manmade forms in December. If you’re lucky enough still to have some green oxygen-producing aquatic vegetation available to fish, then find where it tapers off, and fish around those clumps
Finding spots with all three characteristics can be a tall order for bass and anglers. So, don't bypass ones that have at least two of them. That'll give you the best opportunity to score with more and bigger bass.
