Jig size

I caught this fish on a 1/2 ounce jig
The wind was too strong for anything
lighter.

I fish a lot with jigs for striped bass. I usually use 3/8 and 1/2 ounce jigheads. For the mot part I use soft plastics on the jigheads. I always carry Zoom Flukes, Cocahoes, and 3,4, and 6 inch shad bodies with me.I do carry bigger jigheads up to an ounce when big bait is around in deep water. I also use bucktail jig quite often.

In the spring I usually fish shallow water in the bay for bass. I usually start my day with four inch Zoom Flukes. If the water is cranking, I'll use a 1/2 ounce jig. If it is slow I'll use the 3/8. I never give much thought to the size of the jig and the "profile" it gives to the fish. The difference in length of a Zoom fluke on a 3/8 or a 1/2 ounce jighead is minimal...or so I thought.

Last week I'm fishing a sand bar with a few other guys including my friend Dave and his son Jon. We are all using Zoom flukes and fishing is slow. I was using a 1/2 ounce jighead that I had on from the night before. Although the night I was fishing with Jon was calm, the night before the wind was howling and I needed the little bigger jig or else the wind would bring my lure close to the surface.

All of the sudden Jon starts catching one fish after another. I'm on one side of him and his dad is on the other. Jon is killing the fish and I'm struggling to get a couple hits. I asked Jon if he was was using the fluke and he said yes. He also told me he put on a tiny jighead because he was scraping bottom on the bigger one. So I decided to put on a lighter jighead. The smallest I had was a quarter ounce. As soon as I put the smaller jighead on  I started to catch fish. I ended up with thirteen in about an hour.

We were only casting into four or five feet of water. I don't know why the fish took the smaller jig. Could it be they liked the smaller profile? I doubt it was because the smaller jig was higher in the water column and that is where the fish were. In four feet of water, a striper doesn't have to move far vertically to find food. I guess I will never know.

The next night I went back to the same location. The wind changed and it was blowing directly in our face at first then it became a brutal crosswind. The quarter ounce jig became useless as the wind just blew it across the waves. So we put on the half ounce jig again. We missed a lot of fish because of the huge bow in our line but between us we ended up with 31 fish.

So the point of this post is,if your not catching fish, don't just try different lures, but try different weights. Sometimes a different size profile or differnt depth is what the fish want.