Getting Close to Hair Jig Time........

[LittleRedFisherman]

Awesome looking hair jigs fellas.  I got to try some of mitch's last year, and they are awesome!  I haven't tried to tie any yet, but I can see where that would be fun, the anticipation of the trips while your tying the jigs!  I get pumped up when i'm preparing my tackle the night before!  

I love the challenge of winter smallies, one of my goals this winter is to try new water just for the challenge of getting a winter bit, I did this last year with some success.  It has become one of my favorite times of year to fish oddly enough, of course with my job, it's when I can actually plan a trip!   When I go,  a hair jig is gonna be tied on one of my poles!

[Gavin]

Very nice Ron...plus they are easy to tie. If you want a better hook for them Bite Me Jigs makes a head that is almost identical to those Arky standup heads and it comes with a black nickel gammie.

 

[Old plug]

17 hours ago, Alex Heitman said:

If any of you watched the BFL All American on NBC sports yesterday it was awesome. A local named Jeremy Lawyer the SW MO area did really well and about won it with a 2nd place finish. I've fished some of the BFL's and talked to him. He is a great fisherman and an even better guy. He was throwing a big hair jig with a swimbait trailer on Kentucky Lake. He would throw it out let it sink down a ways and then crank super fast 3-4 times and stop. It was a really neat presentation to watch and gave me some knowledge. Here is the link if you guys want to watch.

http://youtu.be/aoVEOVa_ZnY

I watched it. Was a but puzzled about the mechanics of the retrieve, The draw and let sink is nothing new but the way he was reeling it instead of drawing it I have not seen before. I noted there was high wind and just wonder if he was reeling instead of drawing because of the belly in the line the drawing would create in the wind they were fishing in. That would  make it hard to feel a strike. In the short moment I could see the jig it looked like  it could have been 3/8 Oz. I do know this,  it would have sunk slower because of the bushy white buck tail. I am almost sure the wind had something to do with that retrieve. Just another puzzel somebody just ask him maybe. 

[BilletHead]

           Boy you guys and your hair jigs. Nice work fellows! One thing I have to say you guys and your variations are as bad as a bunch of fly tyers. While I know there are some fly fisherman in your group I am thinking with all this tying there may be some closet fly fishers and fly tyers in here . Well done and happy Thanksgiving you jig pitchers! Actually I still have an original float and fly system. The little box with hair jigs and pear shaped bobbers. Now that I am one of those stuck up fly guys the bobbers are now strike indicators.

BilletHead

[Mitch f]

9 hours ago, Old plug said:

I know it is a lot of fun to tie. A lot of concoctions and experiment. But i am somewhat set in my ways and not very creative to boot so will not be able to really contribute to much to this thread. This picture is more or less what all my jigs look like. I have different sizes and a few different colors but that's it. This  one is a 1/2 oz size in dark olive with a pumpkin pepper trailer. The trailer is a full sized brush hog. I remove those little loops and in this case about 1/2 inch of the nose.I really put more emphasis on my trailers than my jigs. i do like to make them sort of match up most of the time. I am a big fan of the brush hog series. 

Those are very nice, you gave me one and I love it.

For what it's worth, here is one of the creatures I'm trying to imitate. Taken off the boat ramp on the middle Meramec.

[Old plug]

Well you certainly got the body right and the legs.  kind of wonder if you could tread a thingy through the nose to get the feelers. There might be something in some sort in sewing shop somewhere.Jo Ann's is a good  start. All kinds of stuff in there might be used in jigs and flys. 

[Al Agnew]

Mitch's photo is a golden crayfish, the species I'm making many of my jigs match in color.  You can see the bands of very dark brown and light olive, and the reddish bumps and highlights I mentioned before.  Some goldens have light colors that are lighter than that one, almost yellowish.  Like most critters that live on the bottom of the stream, their colors match the stream bottom closely.  Since the middle Meramec has a lot of algae covering the bottom in slower water, it's darker and greener than, say, Huzzah Creek, hence the medium olive in the light bands of the crawdad.  On Huzzah Creek with its much cleaner gravel bottoms, the goldens are much lighter.

Does matching the color without really making it look like a crawdad make any difference one way or another?  Maybe, maybe not, but it's fun to do so and gives me a bit more confidence.

[Old plug]

Al ------ I suppose matching up with the prey is a good Idea. It sure cannot hurt. Then there comes up some wild stuff that matches nothing. During my days on the Meramec from Bird Nest to Onadaga in The mid 60's I tied some 1/8 oz jigs. In  pink and purple marabou. I had no idea or reason to do it. I think I just got bored and thought they were pretty.   But those jigs turned out to be real good small mouth jigs. 

[rFisherk]

I fished 300 days a year for a few years, before I realized that color of your baits is vastly overrated. The action a particular lure possesses, and the way you fish it (speed of retrieve, angle of rod and so forth), is most important, then size, then color. After all, what does chartreuse represent? And it is by far the most popular color for lures.

Body language is the universal lingo of the wild. Mimic the body language that trips a fish's predatory trigger, and you'll catch fish.

[Mitch f]

18 hours ago, BilletHead said:

           Boy you guys and your hair jigs. Nice work fellows! One thing I have to say you guys and your variations are as bad as a bunch of fly tyers. While I know there are some fly fisherman in your group I am thinking with all this tying there may be some closet fly fishers and fly tyers in here . Well done and happy Thanksgiving you jig pitchers! Actually I still have an original float and fly system. The little box with hair jigs and pear shaped bobbers. Now that I am one of those stuck up fly guys the bobbers are now strike indicators.

BilletHead

LOL, 

The guys from San Francisco and New York City think I'm a red neck. The country boys think I'm a city fag. The fly fishermen think I'm a live bait chunker. The Chinese think I'm a typical American. I must be doing something right. I know how you feel Billet! ?