(Editor's note: The following is the latest installment in a series of fishing tips presented by The Bass University. Check back each Friday for a new tip.)
Former Bassmaster Elite Series Rookie of the Year Drew Cook said that there’s one primary reason he loves to throw a swim jig: “Whenever you hook one, you’ve got him,” he said.
Of course, there’s more to it than that. He believes that a swim jig is a 12-month lure, capable of being fished from a foot down to 50 feet, and able to imitate multiple types of forage. Moreover, it’s super-weedless, or as he put it, “It has four wheel drive.”
The most important thing to remember is that “there are no rules to a swim jig,” but he nevertheless tries to keep things simple. For example, he uses four main color types: black and blue; something “green pumpkinish”; the Nichols “best color ever” (green pumpkin plus black and blue); and something in a shad pattern. He also uses only two main types of jigs – the Nichols Sledgehammer in 3/8- and 1/2-ounce, and the Nichols Saber, which has a somewhat lighter hook, in 1/4-ounce and 3/4-ounce. The 3/8 is his most frequently-used size, but he’ll go smaller when he’s around small forage, up to a 1/2-ounce when he wants to imitate larger shad, and all the way to the 3/4 when he’s going offshore or in slightly deeper cover.
He keeps his trailers simple, too. His first choice in shallow water is often the Big Bite Fighting Frog, but rather than rigging it flat, he rigs it up and down. “That gives it that perfect bream profile,” he said. That’s for when there’s visibility of a foot or more. If there’s less, he’ll use a Big Bite Swimmer. “It can call fish in a little bit better.” Although he doesn’t typically “crack his rod” or do the “Alabama shake”, when he does need to do that in emergent grass he likes Big Bite’s Kamikaze Craw, which has a lot of action and holds the bait up better. In deep-water situations he’ll go to the 5-inch Suicide Shad, which looks very natural but doesn’t thump particularly hard.
One thing he’s noted over the years is that a fresh-out-of-the-package lure is not always the best producer. “The more fish you catch on a swim jig the better your bait runs,” he explained. That’s because the skirt and the weedguard get trimmed down and streamlined to be more hydrodynamic. With a brand new jig, he’ll rip part of the skirt out and flare the weedguard wider to try to attain this same effect. Sometimes they’ll get out of tune again after lying on their side in your tackle box, so take the time to get each one ready for battle.
One common mistake he sees is anglers holding their rods too high. They’ll get a strike, drop their rod to drive home the steel, and end up with a lot of slack in their hookset. His preference is to keep his rod just slightly pointed up. When he gets a bite, he’ll reel up the slack and then set the hook.
One other note: When you see a big bass “sharking” your jig, the tendency is to slow it down or stop it. Cook said that’s a mistake. Keep it going. “You cannot fish this too fast,” he said. “You cannot take something away from a bass.”
If you want to learn some of Cook’s other seasonal swim jig secrets, including his tackle choices and why he thinks you’re foolish to use anything other than 50-pound braid around grass, along with when, where and how he uses swim jigs for smallmouths, check out his full video, available only by subscribing to The Bass University TV.
