Come autumn, waters cool and most freshwater gamefish start to slow down and settle into specific feeding and holding zones, which they may be loath to vacate in pursuit of a meal. Sure, some species that prefer cool water, such as pike, trout and salmon, may actually get more active as temperatures drop, but bass, panfish, walleye and catfish get particular about how far they travel and how much energy they burn to catch a bite to eat.
This is the time of year when lead-headed jigs reign supreme. Why? According to jig fishing aficionado and pro for Northland Fishing Tackle Chip Leer, it’s because you have such precise control of the depth—and the place—at which you can fish a jig. If your fish-finder shows you’re over a cloud of shad at 14 feet and the baitfish are fringed by crappies waiting for an easy meal, you can drop a shad-imitating jig straight down to that depth, knowing you’re in the feeding zone. Whether you catch them, of course, is another matter, but at least you know that when using a jig you are able to put the bait in front of the fish. That’s just not the case when trolling a spoon or casting a crankbait.
What’s more, with a jig, especially in a vertical presentation where you just drop your offering straight down over the side of your deck or pontoon boat, you can keep the bait in the strike zone indefinitely. Try that with a stickbait or spinner.
Despite the fact that many gamefish get a bit lethargic when autumn water temperatures decline, the Northland Pro has learned to “bump up” the size of his jig-based offerings.
“I’ve caught most of my biggest fish, of several species, fishing the fall,” he says. “The fish seem to prefer a bigger meal this time of year—and I’m happy to accommodate ‘em!”
Perhaps it’s the opportunity to expend less energy to net one big meal that makes larger baits more attractive to gamefish this time of year. Or maybe it’s because the baitfish the gamefish are familiar with pursuing at this time of year are themselves at their largest size of the year-to-date, having had the entire spring-through-summer season to grow.
Regardless of the reason, Leer recommends using jigs with big profiles in the autumn. That “profile” may be that of an actual baitfish, a shad or shiner or fathead or chub purchased or netted or trapped and placed on the hook of a bare jig. Or it could be a traditional bucktail jig, dressed with deer hair, or a jig tied with marabou feathers or strands of nylon. I have a fisheries biologist friend who swears by jigs dressed with bear hair—and a thin dressing at that. Other
successful autumn anglers prefer to tip their jigs with soft plastic “curly-” or “twister-” tailed grubs, or tubes.
In recent years, anglers have been having great success using natural-shaped and scented soft baits such as those offered by Pure Fishing in their Gulp! and PowerBait formulas. A deadly combo used by a friend who is a fishing guide combines Northland Mimic Minnow jig heads with PowerBait minnows. He bites the “head” off the minnow-shaped bait to allow the soft bait to fit tight up against the back-side of the metallic-finished jig head, which is painted with eyes and a variety of colors.
He uses the jig-and-fake-minnow combos in different weights in fresh- and salt water to catch an amazing variety of fish in an amazing variety of situations, and prefers the PowerBait minnows to the softer Gulp! versions because the former hold up better to casting and strikes from fish and are easier to keep and transport as they don’t require submersion in the Gulp! liquid.
Jig heads offer a variety of hook eye positions for attaching to the line. Jigs with the hook eye at a right angle to the shank, jetting straight up out of the top of head, are designed for vertical presentations. It’s important when using these jigs to tie a knot that pulls snug tight against the eye to allow the jig to maintain a horizontal position in the water, like a swimming minnow. I use an improved clinch knot and cinch it down tight and check it after each cast or drop to make sure the line is coming up off the very top of the eye and is holding tight to suspend the jig in a horizontal position.
Jigs with eyes angled forward or coming straight through the head are designed for casting or trolling. With these, I’ll use a uni-knot that I tighten to allow a loop to remain in the line where it grasps the hook eye, which allows the jig to move freely at the end of the line as it’s pulled forward through the water.
However, most of my autumn jig presentations, as advised by Leer, are vertical. I may drift with the wind to locate feeding fish in the fall, but my jig is nearly vertical, ticking along on the bottom until it’s inhaled by a fish or I spot baitfish or gamefish suspended in the water column above the bottom, at which time I crank-up and put the jig in the feeding zone. Which is where it’s at this time of year, as fish put on the feedbags to fuel up for the long, lean winter months ahead.
