Living Rubber ad August 1979
water and today it is still the preferred jig to fish 25 to 75-ft deep.
A TON OF
CONTACT
The components and
The original
the original Bobby
One Ton jig was
Garland Spider Jig
introduced to everybody by John Murray and Ted Miller. This was the true one ounce football head jig and none of us had ever thrown jigs that big. There was a couple of 5/8 oz jigs out there, but they weren’t that popular, but these Arizona guys really got into fishing steep, vertical bluff walls and fishing deep. They showed us crawling and hopping then deep jig and that the deeper you went, the heavier jig gave you more contact.
50
A DYING BREED
That is really
how that heavy jig
came about. They
were poured with at
light-wire 4/0 and
5/0 hook. That is
right where we are
today with hooks.
It is what allowed
the anglers to fish
deep, to get out of
their comfort zones
and move offshore,
yet stay in contact
with the bottom.
It became so you
could still feel that jig
in 60 ft in 70 ft. It changed the
way we could fish, opening up
deep water fishing to anglers
that had never done it before.
There are still a few guys
around that are exceptional
deep water fishermen. John
Murray, Mike Reynolds, Mike
Folkestad and Andy Cuccia all
come to mind. For me, it is one
of my strengths, but it is a dying
deal, just not a lot of guys do it. If
you ask western fishermen what
the weakest part of their game is,
a lot of them would say jig fishing, a
lot of them would say fishing deep
and a lot of them don’t even have
a clue what deep is. There are just a
whole lot of guys that haven’t ever
expanded into fishing down into that
75 or 80 ft range.
That is why I always say, most
fishermen can count the number
of fish they’ve caught deeper than 30 ft on one hand and most will tell you that they have never caught one deeper than 50. That what separates the good, deep water jig fishermen.
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