The biggest smallmouth bass ever caught was caught in 1954 in Dale Hollow by David Hayes on a bomber trolled behind his boat. Not a realistic approach while wading in a smallie stream. The second biggest was a 10lb 14 ounce monster caught on a hair jig, then the next biggest is a 10.5 lb smb caught on a smoke metalflake grub. Every list of freakishly big smallmouth bass I could find was in fact dominated by some kind of jig. And then there's Billy Westmorland. I can find records of less than ten smallmouth bass ever being caught that weighed more than ten pounds and the late Billy Westmorland caught two of them! And it gets even more amazing. In his book, Them Ole Brown Fish, he tells of catching five nine pounders and seventy five eight pounders! Billy caught most of these giant fish on three lures. A heavy tailspinner, hair jigs and grubs. Again like the deep diving bomber a tailspinner doesn't work too well for a wading fisherman, but hair jigs and grubs sure do.
When I was a kid Billy endorsed silver buddy tailspinners and my brother Vic Coomer's grubs. I still have a few of the old packages with Billy's photo on them tucked away for safekeeping. It was thru talking to Billy at fishing shows back then that I got hooked on fishing jigs for smallmouth bass. While writing this I went out to the truck and dug out my ratty old backpack I carry while wading and took a photo of some of the variety of jigs inside. Here's a few and my thoughts on each off the top of my head;
A...The old marabou jig. I'm old enough to remember when there just weren't many or in some cases any sauger or saugeye in the small rivers and streams I like to fish. Which meant if you wanted to fish in the cold you had to target smallmouth bass. And catching smallmouth in the cold was done one of two ways, with live bait or with a little marabou jig. The subtle non action of a light marabou jig can sometimes tempt a cold water smallie to move a few inches and take one when just about nothing else will.
B and E...craft fur jigs. Craft fur jigs do many things well. They keep their shape a bit better than marabou but still have that subtle movement that catches fish. They have become almost the standard for hair jigs and do everything well. The perfect jig to tip with a small minnow also.
C... Fox and coyote jigs. A few years ago I called in and shot a grey fox bowhunting. The fine beautiful fur was a revelation and I used it for all kinds of flytying. I was so impressed I ordered some fox and coyote tails from a place in Montana and my hair jigs were changed forever. The long fur of these northern canids makes what is in my mind the perfect hair jig. It moves more than any other kind of hair I've seen in the water both on the retrieve and at rest but still keeps its shape and doesn't flatten. If your going to try hair jigs you owe it to yourself to give them a try. I thought craft fur was the be all end all of hair jigs but these have changed my mind.
D.. Bucktail makes a good looking jig but frankly I hardly throw one anymore. My bucktails are now reserved more for the flytying bench than tying jigs with. Bucktails to me just cannot compete with craft fur or fox jigs. I still own a zillion of the things and tip them with live bait or soft plastics to keep them effective.
F1 and F2...Shad body swimbaits with a paddletail. Wonderful baits that come in a huge variety of sizes and colors. Essential to matching many flat profile baitfish like shiners or shad. A must have smallie bait.
G...the modern paddletail swimbait. A great all around lure that I think just looks alive in the water more than it imitates any specific baitfish.
H and I...curly tail grubs. Named by Field and Stream as the greatest lure of all time and by In Fisherman as the greatest smallmouth lure of all time, I'd have to agree. My default and go to bait. Give me some clear with glitter or smoke metalflake grubs and a variety of sizes of jigheads and I'm comfortable with just that on any smallmouth river anywhere, something I'd say about no other lure.
J1, J2, and J3...Different sizes of the curly shad. A hybrid of the curldy tail grub and the shad bodied paddletail this bait does just about everything well, from finesse presentations in the smaller sizes to large and in charge presentations for active fish or at night.
You can just throw a jig like a curly shad or swimbait out and reel it back in and catch fish. Sometimes lots of fish, sometimes big fish. Likewise with bouncing a hair jig or grub along the bottom. But there's another technique that I hardly ever hear mentioned that will net you some trophy smallmouth if you take the time to learn it.
In fly fishing just about the most effective technique you can employ is to nymph fish with a "dead drift". That is a drift where you try to let the nymph drift along freely with the current. Not sinking like a rock but not being pulled along by the line either. But instead floating along like it was unattached to anything at all. But in conventional fishing there are very few ways to do this effectively.
This is what I strive for when fishing a jig in deep runs. That is, a free and natural drift down the run. I stand not upstream nor downstream but roughly across the stream from where I expect a fish to strike. I then make a short cast across and upstream. I then flip closed the bail and do not reel, or at least reel as little as possible. Instead of being retrieved the jig should sweep down and across from me on a tight line. Well not really a tight line. Instead try for a line with no slack but not tight. If the lines tight it will pull on the jig and it won't drift naturally. But if the lines too slack you will not be able to detect the strike. Reel just enough to maintain a taut but not tight connection to our jig.
Now a jig's by definition a hook with a big hunk of lead attached so it's going to sink not drift right?
Well, we have to stop for a second and at least subconsciously match the size of our jig head to the force of the current we are fishing. Too light and the jig will zip along too fast over the fishes heads. Too heavy and your jig will just hang up on the bottom. In most medium sized rivers something in the 1/8 to 1/4 ounce range will let you fish the faster deeper runs that often hold the very best fish.
But I will often search out the deepest fastest water in miles of river. Here I might even go to a 3/8 to 1/2 ounce jig head. It's amazing how often these spots hold trophy fish. And how little these areas are ever fished. After all, a huge smallmouth is still only twenty inches long. It doesn't take a very big spot to shelter it from the current, a calm spot barely bigger than a shoebox in all the turbulence is all we are trying to find. A single big rock or a pile of smaller ones is really all we need. A place where a big fish can lay and then murder any unsuspecting prey floating along in the current. Or even better our jig.
Now I know it's hard to fish a jig like a curly tailed grub wrong. You can just chuck it out and reel it back in and catch fish. Or better yet slow your pace and swim it back just off the bottom. But a grub fished like that is almost a completely different lure than our dead drifted one. Our grub is drifting along with the current. The tails working but because of the current, not our reeling it in. Just drifting along just like a helpless juicy delicious minnow being swept down the run. For me this is much more effective than bouncing a heavier lure along the bottom of the run. I think the look is just more natural. Not only does the size of the jig head effect your drift but you can also change the quality of your drift by the soft plastic you use. Sometimes quite dramatically.
There is one other thing I love about jigs that must be mentioned. They absolutely catch everything in the river from bass to whitebass to channelcats to carp to saugeye to crappie to hybrid stripers. Everything in the river eats them and its not at all unusual to catch five or six different species on a jig in a single trip. And last but not least, shovelheads are suckers for a well presented jig. In fact I've taken to prowling the river at night in summer throwing a big curly shad or grub just for a big flathead. Not much is more exciting than having a 20lb cat hammer your jig in a foot of water at 1am but I guess that's a story for another post.
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