Football jigs
By Derek Remitz
In my last entry, I talked a little about how I got started in the sport. This week I'm going to tell you about one of my favorite summertime bass patterns  fishing football jigs on offshore structure and cover. It's a technique that I learned as a kid fishing the natural lakes around home in Minnesota, but it works just as well on man-made reservoirs.
On natural lakes, I use this football jig pattern mostly on rockpiles and humps. On reservoirs, it works great on points and ledges.
The tools you'll need aren't anything fancy. My favorite football jig is an Omega with a brown skirt with green or purple flash in it. I think brown football jigs are a lot like black and blue flipping jigs. They're colors that the bass just never seem to get tired of and are always willing to bite.
My jigs typically weigh between 1/2 and 1 ounce. I'll use the 1/2-ounce model down to about 10 feet. I throw a 3/4-ounce jig from there to about 30 feet and a 1-ounce model if I'm fishing deeper than that.
I throw the football jig on a 7-foot medium-heavy rod and 16-pound-test Yamamoto Sugoi fluorocarbon line. I spool it onto whatever baitcast reel happens to be clamped on the rod at the time.
Of course, the key to making this technique work is finding the right point, rockpile, ledge or hump, and the way to do that is by experimenting. I've spent enough time on the water that I can usually find an area that just "looks good" to me. Maybe I think it's the right depth or has the right slope or maybe I'm just playing a hunch. You can do the same thing, or you can scout around with your depthfinder and look for areas that have fish activity on good looking structure and cover.
Then make some casts. Even if I don't see fish on my depthfinder, I'm going to fish a spot if I feel good about it and think bass should be there. There's no substitute for trial and error.
I also experiment with my retrieve. I'll drag the jig for a few casts, hop it for a few  just keep trying something different until I connect or decide to try a new spot. Usually it's a question of how fast you fish the jig rather than whether you hop it or crawl it.
My final piece of advice for this football jig pattern involves setting the hook. One thing I've learned from my Elite Series experience is that everyone seems to set the hook differently. I guess that's OK since a lot of guys have success with what they're doing.
I can tell you that I started losing a lot fewer bass when I began using my present hook-set. It's really simple and doesn't look like much, but it works. Sometimes my co-angler will ask me if I even set the hook!
What I do is let the bass pull my rod tip down under a little tension. Then I just lean back into them  kind of like sweeping the hook  and start to reel very fast. It's important to keep reeling because that really sinks the hook and makes a big difference. Give it a try. I bet it'll work for you.
Next week, we'll talk about another of my favorite patterns  shallow water mat fishing.
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