A Nearly Indestructible Crappie Jig

Drop that Xbox and pick up a tackle box! Spending time
outdoors with our children is more essential now than ever before. My favorite activity with my four children involves a day at the lake on our pontoon crappie fishing. Unfortunately, lures are expense costing as much as $10 or more per lure. When you are rigging up to six poles for family enjoyment it can put a dent in your budget hard and fast. My solution, homemade plastic jigs. The great thing about the plastic jig is that they are extremely simple to rig up and use. The downside is that they easily tare, sometimes on the first fish. Now comes the simple, effective, and inexpensive fix that will enable you to catch at least 40 or 50 fish on the same plastic jig. The required items for this include a package of your favorite plastics, some 1/32 oz collarless round jig heads, super glue, and dental floss. Yep, that’s right, you read dental floss. Follow along and in just a few steps you’ll be spending more time fishing and less time rigging. And you’ll do it for a fraction of the cost.

First, slide the soft plastic lure onto the jig head. Make
sure that the body of lure is centered and straight on the hook and that it will easily slide up to the jig head. Take note of where the hook exits the body of the lure. Then pull the lure back off. When doing several of these it is not necessary to do this every time.

Next, hold the jig head by the hook in
your support hand. It is easiest for me to pinch the hook between my thumb and index finger. Now put the tag end (about two inches in length) of the floss between your thumb and middle finger. With your right hand wrap the floss around the shaft of the hook. I start wrapping where the end of the hook stops. Continue wrapping all the way to the base of the jig head and back again. Slightly overlapping the floss on top of itself stopping only when the shaft of the hook is covered with floss. Go ahead and cut the floss so that there are two tag ends both of which should be about two inches long. Take the tag ends and tie two simple granny knots, this will keep the floss from coming undone on the hook.

The third step is to simply start the lure back onto the
hook. Making sure to stop somewhere after the barb but before the bend in the hook.

Now, apply a few small drops of super glue, I prefer the gel
type as it won’t run everywhere including on me. And then slide the lure onto the rest of the hook stopping at the jig head. And boom! Just like that, there it is. A nearly indestructible crappie jig.