Bass Fishing Jigs

In this Instructable I will be showing you some basic rigs for bass fishing.

The texas rig is the most basic and common rig.  It uses a bullet weight and either an offset shank worm hook or an Extra Wide gap hook.  My personal favorites are Gamakatsu Extra wide gap hooks.

For the texas rig you want to start by putting the hook point down 1/4" through the top of the bait. Once you have it down a quarter of an inch you want to push the hook out of the bait.  From there you want to slide the hook down until the eyelet of the hook is right at the top of the bait.  Next line up where the shank of the hook bends and mark that on the plastic with your finger.  Then pull the bait up and insert the hook at the point you made with your finger.  Stick it all the way through and the point of the hook should be parallel with the bait.

When you are texas rigging a crawfish you want to do the same thing as texas rigging a worm except since crawfish swim backwards you want to put the eye of the hook at the tail end of the crawfish.

The next rig is called the wacky rig.  With this rig you want to use a stick bait worm, such as a stik-o or senko worm.  First you want to hold the ends of the worm together and mark the middle of the worm with your finger.  Then take a circle hook or an octopus hook and put it through the middle of the worm.  This should give you equal length of worm on either side of the hook and when you twitch the rod tip up it will cause both sides of the worm to shake up and down.

For this rig you will need a special jig head known as either a shakey head or stand up jig head.  In the water it will cause the jig head to sit with the hook facing up at a 60 degree angle.  You need to have a plastic bait that floats, such as a ZOOM trick worm or craws with floating claws.  First you want to put the hook down into the bait until you reach the bend in the hook.  Then pull it out and slide the top of the bait all the way up to the jig head until it is securely on.  Then, similar to the texas rig, mark with your finger how far and at what angle to put the hook in so that just the point of the hook is exposed.  This is so that you can make it as weedless as possible.  This rig is very effective at catching alot of bass.