28 Louisiana Sportsman^ | April 2015
field notes
J
igs are regularly tied on by bass fishermen year round,
but they are especially important tools during the
spring. Hopped and crawled along the bottom, they
imitate the movements of a crawfish, a favorite food of
largemouths and spotted bass.
Unless they’re swimming along like a baitfish.
That’s the technique that North Carolina bass pro Hank Cherry
has made famous: swimming a jig above a bass to draw strikes.
“I don’t throw a swim jig — I swim a regular jig,” Cherry said.
“I’ve caught them from right under the surface down to 30 or
40 feet deep.
“You start out retrieving it close to the surface, and from there
you work it down until you figure the depth they want it.”
Cherry, the 2013 B.A.S.S. Rookie of the Year, swims a jig on a
7-foot-3, medium-heavy baitcasting rod with a reel spooled
with 20-pound fluorocarbon.
The reel has to have a high-speed retrieve; Cherry likes 7.9-
to-1, which will bring the line back in a hurry — even though
that’s not necessarily the speed he uses when bringing a jig
back to the boat.
He fishes it around any kind of horizontal cover, including
laydowns, docks and riprapped banks. He casts toward or past
his target, engages the reel, keeps his rod tip down and winds
it just fast enough to swim the jig back toward his boat with an
even rhythm.
He’s not trying to burn it back, but he’s not slow-rolling it, either.
Cherry doesn’t want any herky-jerky motion; he’s trying to
imitate the regular swimming action of a baitfish swimming
parallel to a piece of cover.
“I’ve always used a Zoom salty chunk as a trailer, because I
don’t want anything with a lot of kicking. I just want an undu-
lating motion,” he said.
And swimming a jig can gain you some extra bites when
everyone else is throwing flash baits.
“The most-effective time to fish it is when fish are up shallow
and they’re getting a lot of spinnerbait pressure,” Cherry said.
“That’s when you can really catch them by swimming a jig.” ■Swim a jig
for extra bites
By Dan KiblerBassmaster Elite Series pro uses
regular jig to swim up bass
Jigs are great baits when hopped on
the bottom, but swim them and you
could trigger even more bites.Andy Crawford