3 Jigs That EVERY Bass Angler Has to Have!

So a little while back, we did a video on picking out our top three best jig heads for forward-facing sonar plastics. Specifically, we were targeting jigs that we could use on your three to four inch style, you know, minoshaking plastics. But we kind of decided that we wanted to switch it up a little bit and do something that's a little bit more power fishing related. And this is a technique that I really like to to lay the wood to them with. If you're a G-man fan, this is something that you can slack line them with. It's obviously a technique that is never going to die off. It's jig fishing. Specifically, these are all bottom contact jigs. There's there's 100 different ways to to fish a jig. We're going to talk about three different jigs that we use for three different scenarios, essentially. We have some grass jigs in here. We have a football jig in here. We have a structure jig in here. These are just three that that we're going to go through. If you want to see more jigs included in a video like this, if you like this type of a tackle breakdown, obviously let us know in the comments below. We do want to hear from you. But let's take things off. First thing we're going to look at is the structure jig. Of the three jigs that I have here, the structure jig is arguably my favorite. I fish a structure jig more than any other jig in my box, to be honest with you. Personally, the type of fishing that I like to do, I like to fish docks. I fish a lot of rivers, so I'm flipping a lot of wood. Even in other scenarios where I'm still small-mouth fishing, I like to fish around a bunch of rock. Personally, I found the structure jig to be one of my all-time favorites. Some things that are unique about the structure jig itself is it has a cobra style head on there. You can see it's a very unique shape. It's designed to be a little bit more snag-free. Come through, cover a little bit cleaner. I'm a big fan of this one. Another thing to note is it has a zero-degree line tie, so it's a horizontal line tie. The zero-degree line tie is meant to have a straight pull effect on it, hence how it comes through wood and rock so well. One other thing to kind of note about the structure jig is it has a very unique style hook on there. You take a look at that. This is an owner hook. It 's a very special made hook, specifically for this jig. You'll notice that the hook point is bent out just a little bit. It's not straight in. A lot of your other structured type jigs out there will have. I think this just helps with your hook-up percentage. You get a lot better hook penetration when it comes to really cracking them with the bat, as some like to say. Overall, very well designed jig. Denny Brower absolutely killed it with this. I like the weed guard. It's a little bit shorter. It doesn't hang very far over the hook point to me personally. I like this once again. It just helps me with hook-up percentage. It's a little bit lighter of a weed guard than some of your like hack attack style jigs like this one. It's just one last thing to hold you up from getting that hook in the fish's mouth. I really, like I said, love the structure jig, all-time favorite of mine. Now, when I'm fishing a structure jig, I'd like to also mention sometimes I also like to throw the baby one if I need to downsize or give them just a little bit more of a finesse style look. That's when I'll go to the baby style, but I always usually will start with the regular size. When it comes to picking out jig trailers for the structure jig, I like to keep it simple. I'm very big on keeping it simple. My absolute number one go-to is going to be the Strike King Rage Men ace. This plastic hands down is one of my most confident jig trailers that I use at any given moment. I will throw this on a structure jig. I'll throw this on a swim jig. Hell, I'll even throw it on a football jig, depending on the situation that I find myself in if I'm fishing a football jig. But one thing that's really nice about the Rage Menace is it skips really good, which is imperative when I'm fishing this. I'm trying to get this into a back of a laydown. I'm trying to skip this under docks, so it's nice to have something that skips really well. The action of the Rage Menace is one of a kind. The appendages on it have not too much kick in them, so you're not putting too much action in your bait. It's one of those plastics that you can really use all year round. If you want to put less action on it, you don't have to pull the appendages apart if you want to get the most out of it. Obviously, you can pull them apart. But for whatever reason, when I pair these two together, it's a deadly combo, and I just know for a fact that I can get bit throwing something like this. Now, if I wanted a backup when I'm talking a trailer to the structure jig, I would throw either a straight king Rage Craw, like we have here on the back of the hack attack jig . Or if you wanted something similar, you could also use the Berkeley. This is the Maxcent Sugar Craw. Once again, this has a flat bottom on it in the body section there. So this one's also going to skip really well, but you're going to have a little bit less action in the Sugar Craw as you are with the Rage menace. Once again, it all kind of depends on the water temp that you're fishing, the water clarity, the type of cover that you're fishing in. You kind of have to just gauge it. So this is something I'm going to throw if I'm flipping a jig in a little bit colder water. The appendages on the Sugar Craw, they move a little bit less. Also, I'm going to take into consideration if I'm a big scent person. Everything that straight king makes now in the rage lineup here come with a coffee scent in them, huge fan of the coffee scent. But if you're pretty superstitious when it comes to scent and you want to maximize the amount of scent you can use in plastic, Berkeley Maxcent, it's definitely one of the leaders in the industry when it comes to scent-inf used soft plastics and getting fish to hold on longer when they bite your plastic. So that is the structure jig in a nut shell and why it is truly one of my favorites I can guarantee you that as soon as the next fishing season comes around, this is one I'm going to have tied on almost all year long . So looking at my second favorite jig that I like to use is very situation-dependent. If I'm fishing around grass, which is probably my next favorite type of cover to fish, if I'm still going to keep using the jig, I usually like to use two. My personal favorites are the Strike King Hack Attack jig. This is the Outcast Stealth Fighter jig. Where I, when I use each of these obviously is situational. If I'm flipping more heavier grass, heavy milfoil, or if I'm flipping deeper grass, I usually will go with the Hack Attack jig. I like the head on it, obviously it has a vertical line tie. It's very key for fishing in grass. But I just feel like it's a, it's a lot heavier duty of a jig and I can really lay the wood to them, especially when I'm fishing in that thicker grass. If I'm fishing in deeper grass too in that 10, 11, 12 foot range, that's when I'll also upgrade to a heavier size head. This is a three quarter ounce. This is, this is awesome. I mean, if you really like big line, broomstick rods, slack lining them, this is a, this is a really good jig to use , especially with, I mean look how, look how heavy duty that, that hook is, right? There's absolutely no bending that out. So you can, you can put as much pressure as you want on those fish when you're using this type of a jig. Now if I'm fishing some lighter grass, you know, more sparse milfoil or lily pad stems, whatever it might be, that's when I usually look for something like the stealth fighter here. The, the stealth fighter obviously designed by the man himself, Seth fighter, is a really good jig for also skipping to it. You see it has a flat bottom on the head there. You can skip that really well, but I, I like it. It has a little bit lighter of a hook in it. So this isn't something that I'm going to want to fish in super dense cover, but this is something that comes through grass extraordinarily well. The hookup ratio with a stealth fighter is incredible. These are all around super awesome jigs. So a couple cool things about the stealth fighter like this and the cage fighter. These are tungsten heads. So even though they're half ounce, they're going to be a lot smaller of a head on there. They are using what they call frog hair jig skirts. These are very finely cut skirts. They're, they're very thin in the hand and when I'm using this in this lighter grass, I also used to, I also like to use a little bit more slender of a trailer. So right now I have the stealth fighter rigged up with a brand new bait from Berkeley. This is in their max outline. It's called the stank bug. It's a, it's a very slender cross style plastic. You know, it has the cut tail style appendages. Just gives it a very unique action in the water. This was recently used to help some of the pros at the Harris chain, Bobby Lane being the guy that won the event, but also some other notable fishermen in the tournament that placed well, Keith Carson and Adrian Avino were putting the stank bug to work. Now, however, they were flipping this bait. You can flip this bait also. It makes a great Texas rig bait, even if you're fishing in grass also, but for jigs, I liked having it rigged up on the stealth fighter. I think it gives it a very natural look and when you're trying to make that cross style imitation or if you're even trying to imitate, say a blue gill also, you could, you could put some dye on the tips of these. This is a really good option to go with. And then if you're going to go with a bigger jig, if you want to give your bait the most action possible, or if you want to slow your fall rate even to, this is where you can go with a plastic like the straight king rage craw. This is a really great option for these bigger jigs. It's a very, it's a much larger profile plastic to begin with. So if you're trying to do the same thing, if you're trying to imitate a blue gill, or if you want to bulk up your profile for some bigger crawfish eaters, this is a really good way to go. And if you need to, if you need to skip the spade at all for whatever reason, you can skip this thing also. It's a very good option for that. So generally, when I'm fishing a grass jig, I first like to keep my bait slender. I'm trying to get these jigs to fall through the cover easier. So having more surface area in general is, is not my go-to. But if I'm trying to, to bulk up my plastic, then I'll choose something that, that has a bigger profile like the rage craw. All right. So the last type of jig that I feel like everybody should have on their deck is either a finessed style jig or a football jig. Obviously you can switch them up based on the type of fisher you're on. But we kind of chose something that we felt like was in the best of both worlds when it comes to that. So what we have here is the dirty j igs. This is a finessed football jig. So it's a smaller profile football jig, hence the the finessed name to it. But it's still got that football style head on there. Now, why would you want to, why would you want to use a football jig? If you're fishing offshore, you're around rocks or anything. The football jig comes through the rock or the hard cover just a little bit better. It tends not to snag up as much. It'll kind of just roll over based on how you hit the cover there. But I also like to use a smaller profile football jig personally because up here in the north, the for age that I'm fishing around isn't really that big. So having something that's a little bit more lif elike and size to me is key. I like to keep all my colors here pretty natural. This is something that's going to imitate a bluegill a little bit better. You can also use your more cross style colors. You can use a green pumpkin, Alabama craw, green pumpkin craw, you name it. Those are also great crawfish imitators. Another cool thing about the dirty jigs, this finessed football jig is it's got a lighter wire hook in it. It's also going to come with a little bit lighter of a weed guard. This is a really nice option for when you're fishing around pressured fish or if you're around some more sparse cover, it also will allow you to downsize and line once again for those fish that are just really tough to get to bite. So when it comes to picking out trailers for a football j ig or a finesse jig, with a finesse football jig like this, I'll usually pair this jig up with pretty similar plastics to if I was throwing a finesse jig. One that I have rigged up here that's a little bit out of the ordinary. I actually learned this from Josh Strassner is putting a paddle tail on this football jig. If you're fishing around a lot of bluegill, perch, sunfish, you name it, this is a great opportunity to still drag your bait across the bottom but give it more of a swimming profile to really kind of dial in that bluegill type imitation. So right here we have an X-Zone swammer rigged up here for the video but my personal favorites are the kitex swing impact fat. Like I said earlier, this is really the only time I'm going to throw a swim bait on the back of a football jig. So when I'm doing this, I like to keep my colors pretty similar. This is in perch, there's sun gill, there's bluegill colors, you name it. The striking range swim mer also has some really good natural colors in them like IU is one of my personal favorites. I try to keep that, I try to keep that selection very simple, don't overcomplicate it. But one thing that I do keep very consistent is the size of the swim bait I'm using. For the most part, I'm using the 3.3 inch, I feel like this is a happy medium between a swim bait that's big enough to really still pair well with a football jig of this size but it's not too big to where you're really out sizing the size of the forage that you're fishing around. Otherwise if I'm fishing a more finessed style jig, I'll even downsize to the 2.8 inch when you get a really compact profile in there. I do like the 2.8. Now for just about every other type of fishing out there, if I'm trying to imitate the crawfish, you can still imitate your bluegills and whatnot with it. I will also pair it up with the Berkeley Maxcent Chigger Craw once again. I feel like you can never go wrong with this plastic. It's been a staple for years. There's pros on the elites that are still using this. It's obviously always going to be a fish catcher. So this is another one that I really do like to put on the back of my football jig. Now if you're fishing in some colder water or if you're trying to keep a more finessed style look to your bait, a lot of guys will also put a twin-tail grub on there. So this is a 5 inch Yamamoto twin-tail grub. This one's in green pumpkin black and specific. When you put this on the back of your football jig, especially in the winter, when you're crawling that bait on the bottom, even just a little bit of movement still keeps a subtle action in these appendages. They'll move just ever so slightly. For whatever reason, it really does entice the fish to bite, especially when they're being cold and stubborn. The twin-tail grub is not only just a winter time bait. There's still a lot of guys that will use this in the summer and have great success with it. Be sure to have something like these in your arsenal when you're throwing a football jig. So that wraps up our top three jigs that every angler should have in their boat. You don't need to have them out there year round, but if you're only going to pick three, these are the three types of jigs that I recommend you should have. There are so many different ones out there. If you want to see a part two to this video, drop in the comments below. A couple jigs that you think we should go through and do a breakdown on. Like I said earlier, we love to hear from you, so let us know. If you're an Omnia Pro member, you're going to get 10% back on every item that you see here and so many more on the site. You're going to get free shipping on all of your purchases, and you're going to get access to some exclusive mapping layers. I know, especially with a lot of these jigs, having the ability to look at bottom hardness and vegetation cover are key. These are two really big features that come with the Omnia Pro subscription. So you really do need to check those out, especially in the off-season. It gives you something to do on those cold wintery days. But if you're not a pro member, please, please, please do sign up for a seven- day free trial. You're going to get all these same benefits and really get a good look at what Omnia Pro can do for you. You're going to get access to thousands of fishing reports, AI summaries, you name it. We are here to help you dial in what you need to get ready for the next fishing season.