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Date: Jigger Fishing
Title: March 20, 2005
Date: 21 Mar 2005
Time: 12:28:43 -0500
“Brian, you ever heard of ‘jigger fishing’” asked Darrell Marchant. “Yea, I’ve heard of it but never done it” I replied. “Isn’t it using a long cane pole with a short section of line and a skirt and hook tied to the end. Then you float along dabbling the skirt underneath the overhangs along the bank?” I said questioningly. “That’s pretty much it, but there is a little more to it” Darrell came back. He went on to tell me about a trip he and friend had taken up the Steinhatchee river using the jigger technique the past week. They had scored well on bass, bream and tussled with the mudfish. The story sounded so good I had to ask if he would take me. Darrel said give him a call. And I did. This past Sunday it continued to blow a gale which was a perfect reason to go jigger fishing after church. Darrel swung by my house with a twelve foot fiberglass boat in tow. The boat had a 9.9 Johnson hanging off the stern and a trolling motor. We put in at a private ramp a mile or so below the Steinhatchee Falls. Darrel said he’d explain things as we went along and that I’d be doing the driving. Armed with a 20 foot cane pole wrapped from butt to tip with 120 dacron line knotted at the tip with ten inches of spare line. The extra line was tied to a pair of single hooks hidden in a white and red spinner bait skirt with a white pork rind strip. Darrel was jigger ready. After a brief instruction, I ran the boat up stream using the trolling motor at the pace of a brisk walk while maintaining the boat approximately 15 foot off the bank. Darrell balanced the pole horizontally with his left hand and held the end of the pole in his right. The tip of the pole had a natural curve to it. The curve was kept facing down toward the water. Using his right hand, at the butt of the pole, Darrell would jiggle the pole so that the tip lightly dipped in and out the water making a series of splashes as he moved the skirt in and around whatever structure was near the bank. The combination of the splash of the rod tip along with the dance of the skirt made the jigger bait mimic a frantic scurry of a frog or small rodent trying to make it back to shore. The bait looked good. It didn’t take long before the first fish rolled on the bait but missed. If you blinked you missed the action. We puttered up current for about forty five minutes. In that time, we had several boils, caught a couple small bass and a mudfish. We did the same coming back down stream. It was exciting watching Darrell deftly work the bait along every inch of the shoreline. It was especially exciting watching Darrell literally yank the fish from its hidey hole. In fluid motion, the fish was pulled out of the water as the pole was pushed, hand over hand, backwards so to get the rod tip and fish in the boat as quick as possible. There wasn’t any playing the fish out. Bang, get it in the boat. What an inexpensive, simple and effective way of fishing. You don’t need, or have an advantage using, a high dollar boat or equipment. Jigger fishing is effective because the coverage is so complete. As I watched Darrell worked the bait, I thought, two anglers who were expert casters, could not cover the bank as well as a jigger fishermen. Thanks for taking the time to read. Take care of yourself and the tackle. Capt. B. “I get all the truth I need in the newspaper every morning, and every chance I get I go fishing, or swap stories with fishermen, to get the taste of it out of my mouth.” —Ed Zern (1977)