Good Jig Heads Start with the
Right Collar
Put
a good head on it. Many guys pour a beer by
tilting their glass to the side and pouring slowly. In this way,
they get no head on it. Not me. I just pour it in straight and
fast - and let that foamy head bubble up! I like a good head on
my beer AND on my bass jigs both! You can use this article as a
guide to help you get good jig heads. I will go into a lot of
detail as to three different styles of LEAD COLLARS. One style is
best for soft plastics, a second for rubber/silicone skirts, and
a third type of collas that's best for tying hair or other
materials.
 For
soft plastics. What this often means is that the
LEAD COLLAR either has a very big BARB intended to hold a soft
plastic - or the lead collar is an elongated bayonet-style collar
design (such as on Yamamoto jig heads). In my experience, the
barbed style will "hog out the hole" by stretching or
tearing the plastic internally as you slide a bait on. To me, the
bayonet style will securely hold soft plastics and hula grubs
better than any other collar style. It's thin enough not to
stretch/split thin soft plastics, your baits will not slip down
off your jig collar every time you cast or swing 'n miss on a
hookset. Droopy drawer grubs are a real hassle for you, and a
real turn-off for the fish in my opinion. However, any thin
collar (or even no collar) will work with soft plastics merely by
using a tiny bit of superglue before pulling the bait's head up
behind the jig head!
For rubber/silicone skirts: The
proper leadheads will have the following three properties to
effectively hold the bait down on lures that wear skirts:
1) A wide-stem lead collar. To me, jigs that
wear skirts require a fat, cylindrical lead collar for skirt. The
stem of the lead collar should be fat enough so that the neoprene
rubber band (on the skirt) is always slightly stretched. So,
first thing to make sure of is that you have the correct
"girth" in your lead collar - that it is wide enough to
stretch the neoprene band slightly, thereby providing gripping
tension at all times.
2) A rear bumper. Well, this is just a raised
ridge or "bump" at the very end of the lead collar
stem. The best bumpers will be rounded behind (so you can slip a
skirt on easily) but with a more formidable, raised ridge - often
a squared-off lip - on the business edge of the bumper that
prevents anything (usually a bass) from pulling your skirt down
easily.
3) Collar length. Finally, I like the wide
stem of the collar to be, oh let's say, up to 1 1/2, max two
times as long as the neoprene skirt band is wide. This gives me
room to arrange the skirt properly, so it is not smooshed up
against neither the back of the leadhead nor the front of the
bumper. In this way, the skirt gets good water flow and therefore
movement all around, not being impinged by the head or the
bumper. It also gives a little margin of protection against a
bass tugging at your skirt. At least the skirt will have a little
somewhere to go when pulled, instead of just "off".
For tying hair jigs and other natural materials.
First, I do not suggest using thin, bayonet style collars
designed for soft plastics. By tying hair onto such a collar, the
result will be a very thin, densely-packed hair body with no
"hollow core" (see below). I also do not recommend the
squared-off "rear bumper" styles that are most
effective with silicone/rubber dressings. Why? Because the
bucktail hairs will flare out when wrapped down against a
squared-off lip, resulting in a hair jig dressing that looks very
much like an open umbrella. BUT...if what you want are thin,
dense ties or widely-flared ties on your jigs, so be it.
As for me, I often prefer to use a special type of lead collar
designed strictly for tying hair. The correct style is fading
into obscurity in today's modern age of rubber, silicone and
plastic...so you may have to hunt them out to find the right
styles for tying. Why go to through the effort? Because the
proper style of lead collar enables the hair fibers to flare out
just a bit...to create a bulge right behind where they are
wrapped...but you only want the "shoulder" to flare
out. You do not want the entire length of the fibers to flare out
widely...the overall effect of the hair tips and body shape is
that the fibers should have a nicely puffed out appearance right
behind where they are wrapped, and it should bulge out to its
widest point about mid-way down the overall length of the
dressing. Beyond mid-way, you you want the very tips to naturally
come to a point like an artist's paint brush. THAT IS JUST WHAT
THE DOCTOR ORDERED! The overall effect forms what I will refer to
as a "thin, elongated football" shape. You will be able
to see through this shape, as will a fish. This gives the hair
body a certain measure of living translucence.
So, here are the design features to look for in a lead collar
for wrapping hair jigs:
1) A wide-stem lead collar. To me, hair jigs
require a fat, cylindrical lead collar for tying. It makes it
easier to manage and wrap the tying material on a fatter collar.
Also, a fatter collar results in the finished product having a
hollow "tube" underneath the outer coating of hair -
not at all unlike the concept of a hollow-bodied soft plastic
tubebait. You should envision trying to make that hollow-bodied
hair jig as you tie it.
2) A round ball bumper. Well, this is just a
spherical ball at the end of the collar. The diameter of the ball
should not be much wider than the diameter of the tying stem. The
ball causes a gradual rise, and if you do not bear down with too
much tying pressure, it will form the highly-desirable shape and
hollowness described in the prior paragraphs.
3) Collar length. Obviously, the longer the
collar length, the easier it is for a novice to tie on it.
However, a moderately-expereinced tyer should strive for the
shortest possible collar length that can be comfortably tied. To
me, there are only two parts to a jig. It's a yin/yang sorta deal
where the solid lead head imparts action, and the flexible
dressing receives this action. The wrapping in between is merely
the part that marries them together. So, as long as you can
comfortably tie, spread your hairs evenly, wrap and and get your
scissors in there - shorter length collars are better - and the
least amount of thread is better in my opinion too - no more
thread than just enough to barely cover the hairs.
As you may have come to realize by reading the section above,
I love fishing hair jigs, and I have a few more tips about about
tying them. Are you interested? You can click here to read my
article on How to Tie
Hair Jigs. It's early December as I write this, and it's
gonna be a long winter you know...and hair jigs are especailly
deadly in cold or cool water come early spring! Why not wrap up a
few? say that I have written an in-depth article |
