The Initial Drop
Short Rods
The casting technique Devere employs was developed to
fish snaggy rock bottoms. To avoid hanging up requires
careful timing and control, starting with the initial descent.
“You want to try to twitch it at the same time as it hits the
bottom,” Devere explains. “It’s kind of a timing thing. You
don’t want to let it lie there or you’ll hang up usually. You just
barely want it to touch a rock or whatever you’re fishing.”
It’s unusual these days for a professional bass angler
to use a 6-foot rod for nearly any technique, but Devere
says that’s just right for casting a jig.
“I’ve been trying to use longer ones, but the longer it
is the less control you have on the jig,” he says. “When
you pull it, if you’re not careful you’ll jerk it too fast.”
Working the Jig
The twitch described above is
accomplished with a short lift of the
rod tip that pulls the jig over the rocks.
It’s not a horizontal drag, like many
anglers use to cover water with a foot-
ball jig. Exactly how far you pull it varies
based on the area you’re fishing.
“It all depends on how steep the
bank is,” says Devere. “If the bank is
pretty steep, like a vertical bank, you
don’t pull it much at all [because it’ll fall
farther after each pull]. I would guess it
moves maybe 6 inches to a foot at the
most each time. You don’t want to
swoop it real fast. Keeping it going
enough so it doesn’t get hung up is the
main thing.
“As soon as it hits a rock or the bot-
tom you move it,” he adds. “You don’t
just let it sit there. Just keep it crawling
as a crawdad would. You’re pulling it to
make it pop off the rock, and that’s
when the fish hit it usually.”
When he encounters brush, Devere tries to work the
jig around the edges of the cover first. Then he casts
right to it. That way, if he does hang up, it happens after
he’s already made a productive cast.
A jig with a heavy fiber weedguard might come
through wood cover better than a jig with a wire guard,
but Devere says a fiber weedguard jig’s action just isn’t
right. He reserves a heavy fiber weedguard for flipping.
“With that Stan Sloan jig, with just two little bitty wire
guards on it, the wire does protect it from snags a little
bit, but if you pull it really fast into a log it’s hung,”
Devere adds. “If you run into something like a log, don’t
jig it really hard. Just use a little pressure to bring it over
the log.” ■
APRIL 2017 I FLWFISHING.COM
Wood Cover
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