Winter 2020
J N ig or R m ig an Front Runner
®
ddballs
dish on some, starting with the one Fukae whooped him with years back.
OWNER JIG RIG
Take a drop-shot, get rid of the “drop” line and add an offset, wide-gap hook. Congrats, you now have the J-Rig.Similar to the Tokyo rig but without the wire to the weight, the Jig Rig has been a staple of Meyer’s since that Potomac event for one big reason.
“It comes through cover so much better than a Texas rig,” said Meyer, whose favorite size is a ¼-ounce with a 5/0 hook. “That weight goes in first and allows the bait to sit horizontal when it hits the bottom. It’s a different look, and it just doesn’t seem to get hung up as much.”
To clarify, Meyer is not punching or even flipping truly heavy vegetation with the rig (though, he has). He’s talking more about deeper hydrilla and milfoil, casting it out and dragging, shaking and popping it back to the boat while always keeping in contact with the bottom.
Yet, he’s become so found of the rig he’s even started using it to replace a standard jig in some situations.
“When you’ve got that chunk rock that’s really snaggy, it really shines,” Meyer said. “You might go through two J-Rigs in a day as opposed to a dozen jigs on that stuff.
DARTER HEAD
For many spotted bass guys, this is already a staple, and if it’s not, it needs to be. The darter head is hardly new – though Meyer has designed a Texas-rig
version for Owner that should hit the market soon – but it’s more so underused.
“Guys just seem to forget about it, I guess,” Meyer said. “But if there are spotted bass around, I always have it tied on.”
A prime example was the 2018 Forrest Wood Cup on Lake Ouachita. Meyer was trying to tempt spotted bass hanging in deep brush piles with a drop-shot almost the entire first day with little success. Then he pulled out a darter head and proceeded to catch 10 on 10-consecutive casts.
The allure of the darter head is how erratic it is on the fall, and understand, this is a lure where bass will almost always eat it on the fall or the first hop off the bottom. The flat sides of the head catch water the whole way down, allowing the 4- to 6-inch finesse worm trailer to go nuts as it falls. In order to
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