Jig Presentations Guaranteed To Work When Fishing Is Really Tough
Story and Photos By Mark Hicks

Few anglers fish a jig as skillfully as noted Oklahoma crappie guide Todd Huckabee. Day after day, spring through fall, he and his clients jig up loads of slab crappie from Lake Eufaula and other Oklahoma reservoirs. And, when Huckabee competes in crappie tournaments, his jigs often earn big paydays.

Huckabee's jigging methods are mainly pitching and dipping presentations to visible cover, such as standing trees, flooded bushes, laydowns, brushpiles, stakebeds, docks and even weedbeds. Many of Huckabee's first-time clients have done well fishing cover with minnows but not with jigs. They make virtually the same statement when Huckabee picks them up at the dock for a day of fishing.

"I can catch fish on minnows, but I can't catch them on jigs," they say. "Can you teach me what I'm doing wrong?"

"No problem," Huckabee answers.

Because he spends so much time crappie fishing, Huckabee can go directly to a piece of cover where his clients are assured of getting bites. Once he gets to, say, a brushpile, Huckabee tells his clients how deep to fish.

If the crappie are 10 feet deep, Huckabee hands his client a 10-foot crappie rod and tells him to hold it straight up. Then he instructs his client to let out line until the jig hangs even with the rod's butt. This ensures that the client's jig will be in the strike zone when he drops it down to the brush.

At this point, you'd think catching a crappie on a jig would be a sure thing, but it rarely works out that way. The client lets the jig down and immediately begins lifting it up and down, often twitching the rod tip incessantly. Apparently, many people believe a jig isn't effective unless it's in perpetual motion.

When the client doesn't get a bite, Huckabee gives him a sage piece of advice.

"All right, now show me how you'd fish a minnow," he'll say.

The client's response is always the same. He immediately holds the rod still or moves the jig around the cover in slow motion. Then a crappie hammers the client's jig.

Huckabee then quips, "Well, you just paid me to learn how to fish a jig. I just taught you everything you need to know. Ready to go home?"

After a good laugh, the rest of the day is spent plucking crappie from cover with jigs. Though slowing down is one of the keys to jig fishing, it's far from the final word. Huckabee has devised several jigging strokes that come through when crappie are hard to catch. Try them when the bite is off, and you'll never get skunked.

Down-Jigging
When a cold front pushes through and leaves behind a high barometer, a bluebird sky and flat water, Huckabee knows the crappie will be in a negative mood. He usually finds them down near the bottom with their noses tight to cover. He had to deal with this situation after a cold front last October.

"I had been catching crappie 2 to 4 feet deep from standing trees in 8 feet of water," Huckabee says. "I knew the cold front would push them deeper, so I started jigging 7 feet deep."

Huckabee and his client let their jigs hover a foot off the bottom for several seconds and then quickly dropped their rod tips 2 to 3 inches to make the jigs fall briefly. The sudden down-jigging action triggered strikes from crappie that were too lethargic to take the jigs sitting still. The pair caught 80 fish that day by down-jigging. They kept 31 slabs that averaged about a pound each.

A 2-inch Yum Vibra King tube on a 1/8-ounce Crappie Pro jig duped the crappie that day. When the fish are more aggressive, Huckabee prefers the bulkier 2-inch Yum Wooly Beavertail. The mood of the crappie determines which bait he fishes.

"Feeding fish will bite a jig no matter what you do," Huckabee says. "Then there's aggressive fish that are full, but they can still be caught. You get non-aggressive fish when a cold front comes through. It's a real tough bite. You have to finesse them."

No matter what jig stroke Huckabee uses, he presents the lure with one of two rods. One is a 10-foot Quantum Xtralite Dippin' Rod with a Quantum Energy 20 PT spinning reel and 8-pound test AN40 Silver Thread line. The other is a Quantum 10-foot Xtralite Meat Dragger rod with a Quantum Accurist PT baitcasting reel and 10-pound AN40 Silver Thread line.

The Slow Rise
If Huckabee can't coax strikes from cold-front crappie by down-jigging, he resorts to the slow rise. When he's performing this mesmerizing jigging stroke, Huckabee looks like a holy man in a trance. He holds the rod tip dead still close to the water and lets the jig soak for several seconds.

Then he places his free hand palm up under the line in front of the reel and raises the line a foot or two in super-slow motion. He holds the jig up for 15 to 20 seconds and slowly lowers it back down. Most bites happen when the jig is rising.

"If I'm doing that and getting bites, I can't trigger strikes just by raising the rod tip slowly," Huckabee says. "When you raise the jig with your rod, you don't realize how fast you're moving it. It's easier to slow down by raising the line with your hand."

Finger Popping
When crappie are aggressive, Huckabee sparks hard strikes by finger popping. He first drops the jig next to cover at the depth crappie are holding. Then he grasps the line above the reel between the thumb and forefinger of his free hand with his palm facing down. With his free fingers, he repeatedly flicks the line, which makes the jig jump up sharply an inch or so with each flick. Any crappie that's watching the jig can't resist nailing it.
"That technique works well the day after a full moon," Huckabee says. "The fish are aggressive, but they're not feeding because they filled their bellies the night before. That sharp twitch makes them bite."

High Hopping
High hopping does the trick when crappie are very inactive, such as immediately after spawning. Say, for example, Huckabee has been catching crappie every day for two weeks from stumps and brush in 6 to 10 feet of water. He returns to this productive area, only to find that the crappie are in a funk, and he can't get a bite.

"You know the fish are there," Huckabee says. "The only way to catch them is to get a complete reaction bite."

Huckabee triggers strikes by dropping the jig just below the depth where he had been catching them and hopping it up sharply 2 to 3 feet with the rod tip. He lets the jig immediately fall back on a semi-slack line after each hop. The strike happens at the top of the hop or as the jig falls.

Pitch-And-Glide
The pitch-and-glide is one of Huckabee's most reliable jig presentations. Instead of dropping the jig straight down next to cover, he stays farther back and pitches the jig 2 to 5 feet past the cover. The farther he pitches past the target, the deeper the jig will be when it reaches the cover.

When the jig hits the water, Huckabee holds the rod still and lets the bait pendulum back on a tight line. A crappie hears the jig splash into the water and sees it swimming past him. Since the jig is on the move, the crappie must decide quickly whether to strike or let the opportunity pass. If the fish is in a feeding or aggressive mood, it's likely to pounce.

Horizontal Swim
If the pitch-and-glide doesn't get results, the horizontal swim may work. Huckabee drops the jig straight down next to cover and slowly moves it past or around the cover with the rod tip. The jig moves at a slower pace than with the pitch-and-glide and teases bites when the crappie are more tentative. Huckabee especially likes this presentation when he fishes along the edges of boat docks.

The mood of the crappie determines which jig stroke will produce the most bites. Usually one jigging action will outshine all others at a given time. That's why it's so important to experiment.

"A crappie's mood changes from day to day and hour to hour," Huckabee says. "If I show the fish several different jigging strokes, I'm going to find one that works."