looking back....

[CrappieJohn]

While I sit here waiting for some ice to form , I got to thinking back on some of the crappie activity I had last fall. One of the thoughts kept nagging me and it had to do with the plastics bite that seemed to fall on its nose about late October.

Corey Bechtold, Jimmy (Burns, from the Miss. 4-11 forum) and I had a go at the backwaters of the big river around Wabasha on one of those weekends and we pretty much got our fish using hair. Plastic was not the thing to have for the most part and even hanging so scented assistance on the hook wasn't the answer. It had to be hair for a solid bite.

The day we got after the crappies and sunfish was windy and clear. The water was still fairly warm and these fish were hanging in only five feet of water. Structure played a small part in our success, but certainly was not a critical factor this day. getting our offerings to the fish due to the wind was the hardest thing to overcome.

Some fishing the day before had told me that the hair would be needed and we took adequate store of it along, but we also did the plastics thing....the old habits are hard to break away from, you know. We hit this one particular hard and soon figured out the preffered bait and all of us switched to it and all of us were in the fish constantly. But his isn't about the fishing or the fish, it's about those hair jigs and why they were working so well.

In the fall the young of the year minnow forage shows up in these backwaters every year. It is like clockwork. Crappies, sunfish , the basses, perch and even walleyes and northerns follow the huge shoals of chow. It is not uncommon to see crappies at your feet in amongst the rocks "corraling" these tiny minnows. Nor is it unusual to be fishing very placid water only to have it literally explode with fish of all sizes. This is exciting fishing, but if you do not present something that mimics what the fish are feeding on, you can experience some serious droughts between hits. And this is where the hair comes in.

These small jigs (1/32) are made with very little in the line of material, essentially consisting of nothing more than a painted jighead with eyes and some feather fibers. And darned few feather fibers. When wet, the feather makes nothing more than a line, much less in diameter than a pencil's lead. Not much to look at and certainly not much in material, they are the key to this fishing.

By looking carefully at a couple of these small forage fish one can see that they are almost invisible except for the eyes and the blood-line (lateral line). They are hard pressed to be more than an inch long. What these jigs do is emmulate only the eyes and the lateral line.....the eyes of the jig giving the fish an idea of which end they are looking at and which end to hit.

Color can be a factor if there are water conditions that are changing day to day. We found that a black head with pink feather was absolutely deadly. For that matter, it was deadly all last fall. The year before it was an orange head with yellow feather.

The picture shows the size relationship to a nickle. Note the large head in relation to the thin body. This is important. Going back to looking at these minnows one will see that this is about all that there is to them....a very skinny body compared to an almost over-sized head. Not so odd and very effective.

When the fish are being ....well, fish....these jigs can be tipped with some solid fodder such as power nibbles or a waxie. On this particular outing, we caught fish on just the jig, with the nibbles, and even some little pieces of Gulp.

The bottom line is to pay attention to "the little things". Being aware of seasonal offerings of food can pay huge dividends in fishing success. Fly fishermen try to "match the hatch" and by going prepared the panfisherman can do the same thing.

[Corey Bechtold]

Good points Tom! It always pays to cover all the bases. Fish in the Fall seem to change their minds more than women changing their jeans! That was a fun trip we had none the less!

Bring on the Ice or something, anything!!!

Corey Bechtold

[CrappieJohn]

Women? Changing their jeans? I must have been paying way too much attention to my hookset, dude!

Nice picture, too....isn't it? DENNIS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[delmuts]

man Tom! he sure has my interest now!!! i did well this fall with plastic, but it falls into the same bracket as the hair jigs you talked about. also the one guy that was using hair jigs had the same profile. just a few strands of hair and a 1/32 head. for us it was white or glow in the dark. now what about gals changing jeans???? del

[Corey Bechtold]

You don't know? Women change their jeans and always ask if they make them look fat. I made that mistake once, ONCE! they never look fat! But they still try on about 20 pair before they get the right ones! Fish can be as selective as women... Understand?

[delmuts]

NO ! of course i'm divorced too!!! del

[CrappieJohn]

Sorry for the fuzzy picture guys, but it was meant more for a size comparison so everyone could see how sparse the feather fiber really is. They are not a very big jig. Laid next to a flu-flu they look awful demure.

I have used these in the spring too when plastics get sluggish spring and I am anxious to try them in the early ice season while the fish are still half-attached to the fall structure. We may miss that op if the weather doesn't snap around. In the spring they definitely need some meat added.

This is simply a situational jig that falls into the immediate profile needs to trigger strikes. They do not work well at all during the summer months.... When the small, fry-type forage comes into the shallows, though, during late,late summer you are filling the situation's need for a bait of appropriate profile (something that closely resembles them).

Some of the micro-tailed plastics (ratso for example) work well when motion, however slight , is the key for triggering strikes, but these jigs offer little ,if any, movement at all. They simply look ike a baitfish at rest. As a fact, these jigs are hit most often and the hardest while just sitting there.

Ya hey, the pic is a bit fuzzy, but the way these catch fish is not a fuzzy fact. The jeans, now Corey, have nothing to do with whether they make a woman look fat....it is a tool ladies use to see if you are totally aware of THEIR profile. Sometimes a hug goes a lot further than words....as long as the huggee has your ring on her finger.