Recycling a 4/5 oz Remington Slugger

[wolc123]

My “go to” bait for smallmouth bass is hand-tied 1/8 oz bucktail jigs.  I have a head mold, so most of the material is free.  That limits the cost to the price of the hook.  My last bass of 2021 naturally fell to one of those.

Sometime this winter, I am going to make up 6 “special” ones with his tail and from the lead that this big guy caught for me with his rib cage last night:

 

 

[Grouse]

Nice deer.  Waste not, want not.

[suburbanfarmer]

You sir have many talents..

[rachunter]

How the heck do you fish a hair jig? I picked up a few after reading your posts,but have no clue how to fish them.I tried tipping them with a curlytail and swimming it.

[wolc123]

13 minutes ago, rachunter said:

How the heck do you fish a hair jig? I picked up a few after reading your posts,but have no clue how to fish them.I tried tipping them with a curlytail and swimming it.

There are all kinds of ways to do it.  On calm water, cast it out and let it sink to the bottom, then hop it back to you.  Fish will usually strike on the fall, so a sensitive rod and low stretch fluorocarbon line help out a lot.   
 

One of my favorite ways to use it is on suspended fish, that are actively feeding near the surface, over deep water.  That action goes on most of the summer in the small Adirondack lake where I go a lot.  
 

I watch the surface for fish breaking and row my boat near.  Cast out the jig where you seen them splash and they will often hit it just after it lands.  No worries about loosing jigs on snags up top over deep water.  I have caught dozens on the same jig that way.  
  
No tipping is needed with the pattern I tie.  It looks just like a crayfish which is just about the favorite thing the smallmouth likes to eat.  The clearer the water the better they work.

I caught my largest of the season last year (20-1/8”)on my home water (upper Niagara river) this year, simply bouncing a quarter-ouncer along the bottom on a drift in about 20 ft depth:

 

 

Edited November 27, 2021 by wolc123

[SpacemanSpiff]

How do those jigs work for ice fishing? Great buck by the way. 

[mlammerhirt]

Wolc.....do you cut off the whole tail then just use strands from it to tie the jigs.

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[wolc123]

7 hours ago, SpacemanSpiff said:

How do those jigs work for ice fishing? Great buck by the way. 

I never tried them for ice fishing.  For that I use minnows on tip ups and jigging Rapalas tipped with a minnow head on the center hook.  
 

 

4 hours ago, mlammerhirt said:

Wolc.....do you cut off the whole tail then just use strands from it to tie the jigs.

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I cut off the whole tail, skin it to remove the bone and meat, salt it, and nail it to a floor joist in my basement.  
 

For my crayfish pattern, I only use the brown hair from the back of the tail.  There is quite a variation in colors, with some deer having nearly black tail hair while others are very light brown.  Sometimes the darker jigs work better and sometimes the lighter ones do. 
 

I also make a minnow pattern, using some of the white hair for the belly and the “almost black” for the  back.  The minnow pattern uses a black head with while painted eyes with a black center dot, while the crayfish gets a solid brown painted head, which actually represents the tail of a backwards swimming crayfish.
 

The minnow pattern works better for pike and walleye while the crayfish pattern is preferred by smallmouth, which is about 90 % of what I target.   I tie the hair in bunches to the hooks and don’t use any of the hide on the jigs.   
 

Deer tail hair works better than body hair for jigs because it is longer and has better action in the water.  Body hair is stiffer and stands almost straight out when you tie it to a hook. 

 

[The_Real_TCIII]

I love this. I used to tie caddis and comparaduns from my deer and pheasant tails from my turkeys


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[wolc123]

7 minutes ago, The_Real_TCIII said:

I love this. I used to tie caddis and comparaduns from my deer and pheasant tails from my turkeys


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The nice thing about making your own lures, in addition to the cost savings, is that nobody else has exactly the same thing.  Sometimes, that makes a difference in high pressure situations.  

Edited November 27, 2021 by wolc123

[wolc123]

It’s a good day for making jigs  and I just tied up a half dozen.  The temperature is about 80 degrees in front of the wood stove.  I found another use for the 4/5 oz of lead that my buck caught with his rib cage last fall.

 If I ever get sick of that antler ornament, I will make a few more jigs from it.  
 

[9jNYstarkOH]

4 minutes ago, wolc123 said:

It’s a good day for making jigs  and I just tied up a half dozen.  The temperature is about 80 degrees in front of the wood stove.  I found another use for the 4/5 oz of lead that my buck caught with his rib cage last fall.

 If I ever get sick of that antler ornament, I will make a few more jigs from it.  
 

Have you tried using wheel weight lead? 

[wolc123]

1 minute ago, 9jNYstarkOH said:

Have you tried using wheel weight lead? 

I have, but they are a pain to process and don’t seem to work that great.  It seems like I got a lot of incomplete fills on the smaller sizes using those.  My mold makes 1 each of 1/32 oz thru 3/4 oz sizes.  1/8 & 1/4 oz are what I use the most of.  I use a few 1/16 oz when they are real shallow, and 5/16 oz when real deep and/or on faster drifts.

A buddy of mine, who owns a pattern shop, gave me a bunch of good soft lead that pours real nice.  I won’t be needing any wheel weights for a while.  My mold actually has “avoid wheel weights” printed on the outside. 
 

One thing nice about pouring your own heads, is that you can change hook sizes.  I usually bump them up at least one size from the standard, which is labeled on the mold.  Hooking percentage improves on bass with the larger hooks.  It also improves with the lighter weight heads.  

 

 

 

 

[Chef]

How the heck do you fish a hair jig? I picked up a few after reading your posts,but have no clue how to fish them.I tried tipping them with a curlytail and swimming it.

Looks like what us surf guys call a bucktail ?


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[rachunter]

8 hours ago, Chef said:

Looks like what us surf guys call a bucktail ?


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Yes a very small bucktail.I even tried a 1/2oz bucktail.I wish it work the same way as in the salt I loved slow rolling a bucktail then BANG fish on.I'm going to keep trying hopefully I'll figure it out.

saltwater and freshwater fishing are night and day in comparison to each other.

[Chef]

Yes a very small bucktail.I even tried a 1/2oz bucktail.I wish it work the same way as in the salt I loved slow rolling a bucktail then BANG fish on.I'm going to keep trying hopefully I'll figure it out.
saltwater and freshwater fishing are night and day in comparison to each other.

Yea but it’s essentially the same lure just smaller..
And probably fished a little different in the water column


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[wolc123]

25 minutes ago, rachunter said:

Yes a very small bucktail.I even tried a 1/2oz bucktail.I wish it work the same way as in the salt I loved slow rolling a bucktail then BANG fish on.I'm going to keep trying hopefully I'll figure it out.

saltwater and freshwater fishing are night and day in comparison to each other.

I used a minnow pattern (black back / white belly) bucktail jig 1/4 oz last March, in the Pacific, for spotted bay bass and they were liking it.  I tipped it with a small rubber swim bait.  
 

That was the only time I tried hair jigs in saltwater.   I was using a cheap pos telescoping fiberglass rod, that fit in my suitcase, and 10 lb mono line.  Certainly that was not a very sensitive combo.

In freshwater, I use a 6 ft 1 pc, medium light graphite rod and 8 pound test fluorocarbon line.  You can almost feel the bass breath on a light jig with that super-sensitive combo.  
 

That, and skipping the beers, until you have your limit of bass onboard, are important when it comes to detecting the strike on a light (1/8 -1/4 oz) hair jig.  The clearer the water, the better the hair jigs work.