Jigging Strategies

With jigging season really kicking into gear lately in our region of SE Queensland, its a good time to talk jigging strategies! This week it is about choosing hook rigs, next week we will move onto jig shapes and styles.

It can be a bit daunting trying to figure out the best assist rig for your jigs 1 hook, twin hooks, twin top and bottom?  I find it is best to be flexible depending on how the fish are behaving on the day as well as the style of jig and potential target species.

For Seriola species like Yellow Tail Kings, Amberjacks and Samsons, starting with a single hook is a good way to go as they typically hit the head of the jig and try to swallow it from the top down. When the fish are active, it usually doesnt matter if you miss a hit as a second or third bite is not faraway. When the bites are harder to come by, I either run a longer single hook to pick up the short strikers, or swap to twin assists. Twin hooks can definitely pin more fish, but they can also be a risk inside the boat during a hot bite. If 2 or 3 anglers are landing kingfish at once, the extra swinging hooks around the flapping fish can easily catch an angler in the hand or leg, so take plenty of care.

On demersal and reef fish, twin hooks make a lot of sense since the fish are often less active or less aggressive on the bite. Also, with soft mouthed or lightly hooked fish there is always a good chance the 2ndhook will snag the fish and make a more secure hookup. Whether or not to got win hooks both top and bottom depends on a few factors: Jig length, target species, bottom terrain/technique. For jig length, the longer the jig, the better they work with top and bottom hooks. Many people assume long jigs are only for fast mechanical jigging styles but many are excellent for technical and slow jigging and can often get a stronger response than the standard short jigs. With target species, some species like snapper have small hard mouths which they use to crush their prey rather than inhale it. They can easily miss the hookup, so again top and bottom hooks are great. With many other fish like many coral reef species, they tend to inhale their prey first the standard top hooks work great here. Lastly, if the bottom is rough or you are using techniques like tapping the jig on the bottom to stir up pearl perch, then bottom hooks are likely to cause more snags than anything else, so just top rigged hooks are the way to go.

FCL Labo MSL Jigs have been re-stocked!

PE 8 - 10 Rod Review

We are back this week with a new video, this time reviewing a selection of premium PE 8-10 topwater casting rods! In this heavyweight head to head, we put six top-end rods to the test on their casting, lure action and fish fighting ability. These rods are the perfect tool for chasing giant GT, large tunas and a range of XL sized pelagic species around the world. We put them through their paces to see where each one shines and how they can help you catch that dream fish!!