Basic Presentations
Hibdon believes an angler can fish a hair jig just about
any way he wants: dragging, hopping, stroking, crawling,
free-falling, pitching, swimming. Here are some of the more
common ways pros use it.
Lift and Glide
FLW Tour pro Jeff Gustafson employs a more modest approach when
targeting smallmouths in the fall in his native northwest Ontario. Using
1/4- to 3/8-ounce mid-sized (4 to 5 inches of hair) bucktail jigs, he plucks
smallmouths off isolated rock piles, points and humps once the water
drops below 50 degrees using soft “lifts,” then letting the jig pendulum
back down to the bottom.
Reel and Kill
Pickwick Lake guide and T-H Marine FLW Bass Fishing
League veteran Roger Stegall uses a simple bucktail jig when
bass are feeding on gizzard or threadfin shad, but won’t
touch any other lure.
His methods of fishing a hair jig are typical, similar to how
Gross and Ponds fish it on ledges. He either reels it in a few
cranks and then kills it, repeating the sequence several
times, or he hops it on bottom.
“When it stops it does a ‘fluff,’” Stegall says. “That really
seems to be attractive to fish. The hair sort of blooms out.”
Drag
This one’s simple, but it’s the preferred way to fish a craw-
fish-imitating hair jig. Either pull it along slowly, or work it down
a rocky bank with subtle twitches and tugs – even a soft hop.
Swim
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Minnesotan and Tour rookie Josh Douglas catches bruis-
er smallmouths by swimming a 1/16- to 1/8-ounce black,
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