how's it going guys Caleb wistad here and today we're going to be breaking down everything you need to know about walleye jigs now my goal is to make this the most comprehensive video out there on walleye jigs so that you can understand exactly which one to look for next time you go shopping we're going to start by breaking down everything that is important about a walleye jig from hooks to line ties to weight to color we're going to break all that down and then I'm actually going to go into each jig style and give you a couple of applications for each style so you know exactly what technique they're designed for and how you can use them to catch walleyes we're just going to stick to plain jigs that you can either add a plastic trailer to or live bait in this video at the end of this video I'm also going to give you my number one underrated jig that I think a lot more Anglers should be using so stick around for that let's get started we're going to start with weight now walleye jigs are typically sized by weight so if you go buy a pack of jigs they're going to have a a specific weight on there and that's going to help you decide which ones to get so walleye jigs typically come in anywhere from about 1 32nd of an ounce up to about an ounce and that's kind of the range you're going to be using for most walleye fishing now the heavier The Jig the better it's going to hold in wind and current if you're fishing a real fast River situation or in a windy area or deep water you're going to want to go more with that like you know half to three quarter ounce jig and that'll help you hold in those situations now the heavier The Jig the faster and snappier the movements of The Jig are going to be as well so this jig reacts really quickly to your Rod tip movements and it's great for SNAP jigging because that bait is going to really pop and trigger fish now there's certain days especially in Clear Water in natural lakes fish will be keyed on more natural slower moving presentations and that's when you want to go to a lighter jig like a eighth ounce or a quarter ounce jig and that is going to move much more naturally through the water it's going to have slower reactions it's not going to be snapping and twitching real quick and sometimes that's more what the walleyes want especially in like shallower water clear water situations sometimes you have to downsize that jig weight and have a slower rate of fall and that really triggers walleyes in certain situations now the other thing you're going to need to know about weight is basically the the more bulk you put on The Jig the heavier your head's going to have to be to overcome the water resistance of that trailer so if you're fishing a larger swim bait with a big paddle tail you're going to have to upsize your jig weight to make up for that that bulk that's dragging in the water just to make that fall rate consistent and be able to keep that jig down towards the bottom so that pretty much covers weight so the next thing we're going to get into is jig composition and basically there is two primary materials that jigs are made out of one is lead and one is tungsten now lead has the advantage of being really cheap to make easily moldable so they can make all kinds of different shapes and it's the most common jig type you'll find the disadvantages are lead is toxic so if you're concerned about the environment or your health lead isn't always the best choice for that you know it's been proven fairly safe to use but it's definitely toxic to some degree the other disadvantage to lead is it's very soft so when you hit bottom or feel a strike it's not going to Telegraph that to your Rod as well as tungsten is now tungsten is extremely heavy for its size it's denser than lead it's also harder than lead so it makes a jig fall faster for less weight and less bulk so you can really get a smaller profile jig that's going to get you to the bottom quicker it's going to have less water resistance so in deep water situations it's great it also is non-toxic and it is very hard so you can feel the bottom like really really well you can feel rocks and different things on the bottom when you dig it and you can feel the strike better because it's going to not be softened by that lead so you're going to feel that thump and tungsten is a great choice however it's not the cheapest so if you're losing lots of jigs a lot of times it's better to go with lead and you're gonna you're not gonna break the bank that way but they're both good choices you know tungsten is probably my favorite if I had to pick one but there's plenty of applications for lead as well so either will work but that's kind of the difference between the two so let's get into jig head shape now jig head shape is a key to how The Jig performs underwater it's one of the most important parts of a jig now the typical standard jig that's been in your grandpa's tackle box and your dad's tackle box and I'm sure your tackle box is a stand ball head jig and basically just a ball on the end of angled jig head hook and it gets the bait down there and it does the job they're cheap to make and you'll find them in just about any tackle store in the country so the disadvantages to them is they don't track super straight they tend to wobble a little bit more they're not going to lay on the bottom very well they're going to want to roll over and kind of lay flat and lifeless on the bottom if you're fishing on the bottom but they also don't cut current real well so they don't drop super fast in a river situation they're just gonna fall a little bit slower and tend to lift up off the bottom more so if you're fishing just basic areas where you're going to lose a lot of jigs these are probably the cheapest ones you can get so that's a huge advantage and they just they do work so bulk jigs just keeping them in your tackle box that's probably a great one to use now a little bit more advanced jig is going to be your pillow that jig so this is a pill shaped jig so it's round from the side profile but when you turn it this way you'll see the sides are flat now this jig is going to track a lot straighter than a ball head jig and it's going to fall a little bit faster and it's going to do better in current so this is a great jig for casting and retrieving swim baits or you know vertical jigging and current like a river it's going to be a great for slicing through that current keeping your jig tracking straight and that's an awesome option they also oftentimes have really nice eyes on them and that can be a trigger as well the third style of jig is going to be kind of a hybrid or like I guess I would call it a deep V jig and these are fairly new on the walleye scene but they're a top heavy jig that comes down to kind of a keel on the bottom and these jigs fall really really fast for their size they've got those nice flat sides similar to the pill head jig but they cut through current really really well and the one disadvantage to them is again when you hit the bottom with them they tend to roll over because of the weight on top design they're not going to be great for fishing on the bottom but for vertical fishing especially in like a river or where you want a fast fall rate these things are awesome and I really really like these jigs now the next head shape is the stand up jig so a stand-up jig is basically flat on the bottom and that's going to allow this jig to sit upright and it's going to basically have that bait just up in the fish's face and if the fish are feeding on the bottom a stand-up jig is a really good choice because you can lift it drop it and that bait stays above the mud and kind of Wiggles in their face it's visible even when it's on the bottom it doesn't lay over flat and the fish can see it they can just come down and suck it right in off the bottom now here's another shape that's fairly new to the walleye scene and that's the pear-shaped jig so a pear-shaped jig is a little bit more weight forward than a round jig and that's going to keep it more horizontal because as the weight is kind of pulling down on the front of that jig so these are great for fishing under a float like a slip bobber you know or a vertical jigging they're gonna they're gonna really keep that thing horizontal in all conditions and you don't ever have to worry about it tipping down on you so that's a good shape for uh those situations and then we have your minnow bait head so The Minnow bait head is basically shaped like a minnow head and that is going to keep that bait tracking really straight it's also going to match up well with plastic right here where the seam is you're not going to get a neck down spot where the head is actually wider than the plastic it's going to match up and look like a streamlined profile all the way across that jig and that works really well for casting and retrieving swim baits it's one of my favorite swim bait jigs is The Minnow head jig now here's one more style that I would consider a very good jig for fishing in Weeds and that is like I guess I would call it more of a triangle style jig where there's a point that comes to the Align tie at the front and that's going to snake through weeds a lot better than a jig tight coming off the top and it's kind of a streamlined head designed for the weeds to just kind of slip over that jig and that works much better and heavier cover and some of them have weed guards as well but that's one of my favorite jigs for fishing weeds is what I would call a triangle shape jig all right guys let's get into jig hooks so jig hooks are very key to the performance of any walleye jig and there's four key aspects we have to look at when we're choosing in the right hook number one is wire size number two is shank length number three is the hook Gap and number four is the line tie position so the hook wire size is going to be key to how you're going to hook fish and hold fish primarily so a lighter wire Hook is going to hook fish better it's got much less resistance to penetrate the fish's mouth and it's going to tend to be easier to hook fish especially on white line and lighter gear now when we're talking heavier hooks the heavier the hook is the better it's going to hold fish once you hook them and if you are fishing really really big fish or big baits and you've got heavy tackle you're going to want a heavier hook so you don't bend that hook out in the fish's mouth and you're able to hold that fish better and that's what you want to look for when it comes to wire size now there's one other advantage to a light wire hook and that is if you tend to hook a lot of stumps if you're fishing in a lot of wood cover you can actually Bend this hook out if you have heavy enough line and you can retrieve that jig and then just bend your hook back into shape and not lose that jig on that stump or that wood cover and that can be a really really beneficial Factor when you're fishing around a lot of wood so that's pretty much it when it comes to the wire size now the shank length is very key when it comes to fishing longer baits you're going to want a longer shank length you want to have that hook back far enough that the fish isn't able to grab that the tail of that jig and not get the hook in their mouth now the other great scenario is when you're double hooking a minnow so if you want to hook that minnow through the head and then back through the body again this is a great way to do it with that longer shank hook so when I'm fishing live bait for instance I'm going to typically go with a short shank jig such as this one and that's because when you fish live bait a lot of times you you want that bait close to the jig head so it's a nice compact package and you're not fishing that bait way far back from the uh jig so when you're fishing like minnows or leeches and you're lip hooking them and hooking them right in the end you want to be able to have that fish grab that bait and get the jig in their mouth so that's when it when you want a short shank now the third thing you're going to want to pay attention to is the hook Gap so the Gap is basically the distance between the shank and the tip of the hook point and you want enough Gap in there that it's going to be able to hook the fish really well you start getting into a bulkier bait and that Gap starts to shorten up and number one it's going to be a little bit harder to hook that fish number two when you do hook that fish the fish's mouth isn't going to be able to slide all the way down to the Bend if there's a big bulky plastic in the way and it's probably going to come off you want that bend to be where the the fish's mouth is sitting when you're fighting that fish if it's up here it's going to pop out much easier so you want to make sure your hook Gap is sized correctly for your bait now you also don't want too big of a gap because if you have too big of a gap you may miss more fish it's harder for the fish to get that bait in their mouth The Wider that Gap is so kind of keep it narrower for smaller baits and only go wider on the Gap when you have to or when fishing bigger fish to make sure you get good purchase on that fish's mouth now number four is line tie position so line tie position is very important typically it's very simple the further towards the top of the jig that line tie is the more it's designed for vertical fishing and the reason is that lines coming right down here it's going to keep that jig horizontal in the water and you're going to be able to have that minnow profile or that bait profile if you start to try and fish like a more line tie forward jig such as this one in a vertical fishing scenario it's going to hang down the bait's going to look like it's dead and not hanging not natural at all so that's more designed for a horizontal presentation where you're swimming a jig casting casting and retrieving that sort of thing great for swim baits or snap jigging stuff like that you can use a much more forward-facing line tie and again the other advantage to a forward-facing line tie is it snakes through the weeds much better especially on a weedless jig the problem with a vertical line tie is you have a line coming off the top here and weeds tend to slide up along the line and get caught on that jig so it's not a very weedless presentation so if you move that eye forward it's going to slide through the weeds much better alright guys time for color color is one of the most confusing aspects of Jigs and it's something that uh you can break down as far as you want sometimes it makes a difference sometimes it doesn't but I've tried to simplify color selection down to about six or seven different types of color and then from there it's just a matter of experimenting so basically um to me you've got your silver and gold and shiny colors you've got solid uh natural and patterned natural colors and then you've got solid and patterned bright colors and then you've got your UVS and your glow colors so that's kind of how I break it down with a lot of walleye jigs they have two tone colors as well so they're mixing and matching a couple of those different ones so I'm going to start with your Chrome's your Silvers your Golds these are great for fishing Clear Water sunny days when that light is going to hit the jig and reflect off of it a gold jig is if I had to pick one jig it would probably be a gold jig a gold jig will catch fish just about anywhere but there's times where Chrome or silver tend to work better especially in like pelagic fish scenarios where you have smelt or Alive stuff like that that are more silver Shad that kind of thing that can be a real key probably not the best colors to fish in really dark murky water or you know really dark days they don't really stand out as much those are great for Clear Water sunny conditions now your natural uh let's see if I have one here here's a natural color a solid color these are great as well for fishing Clear Water scenarios finicky fish you know I tend to not use as many bright colors in Clear Water and tend to stick with those natural whites and minnow minnow type colors even the plain lead head jig you know a lot of jigs come unpainted like this one we'll catch fish it's a pretty natural looking color and that's a great option you can also get like natural pattern colors that have like stripes and stuff on them and I don't think that's as important on a walleye jigs because typically they're moving fairly fast but you can certainly change it up and put some like stripes or scale patterns on those Jigs and then you get into your bright solid colors and your bright pattern colors and those I obviously are going to fish in a little bit darker stained water chartreuse is one of the best walleye colors if not the best while I color overall of all time chartreuse will catch fish in almost any condition even clear water at times I've done really really well on chartreuse it just seems to be a walleye killer another great one is purple uh purple is a good walleye color especially in Darker water you're talking dark days on Dark Water you want a darker bait so that profile can be seen from below and that's when purple is gonna be more of a standard for me than like my oranges or chartreuses so then we get into our basically our UVS and our glows and glow jigs have been around for a long time they're great for fishing at night helps the fish track that bait at night and I'll definitely use those if it's if I'm fishing in the dark a lot of times not always sometimes it tends to have the opposite reaction and fish kind of shy away from it but you just have to kind of try it and see how it works some nights you can't hardly beat a glow jig it just seems like they really really key on that and then your UV colors those are going to be really good in low light conditions so like morning evening super murky water a little bit of UV light comes through and and it reacts different to water than than your standard light that we BC and fish can kind of pick that out in low light conditions typically so I think this these jigs right here have some UV on them and that's going to show up a little bit better for those fish so that's kind of how I break down color again there's days where it really really matters but there's a lot of days where basically just a basic presentation change of light to dark or dark to light or you know to UV is going to be the only thing you're going to need it's not really going to matter if it's pink or chartreuse or Orange versus black or purple you know it's it's really not going to matter it's as long as you're making those bigger changes you'll find out what the fish prefer and that's what I go by so one more thing I wanted to go over is jig accessories so basically what can we add to a jig to make it more effective now some jigs are modified to accommodate certain things and some jigs have them built right in so the first one I'm going to go over is the Stinger hook so you'll see some walleye jigs have a line tie on the bottom of the jig like this one and that's to put a stinger hook on that jig and the Stinger Hook is basically an extension of your hooking capacity so it's going to take a little piece of line or wire and it's going to move a hook to the back of the bait so this little treble hook is back here for short striking fish that are just coming up behind it and nipping that bait they're going to get hung on that Stinger hook and it's a great way to hook those fish that are finicky and short striking so that's a good option to have a few jigs in Your Arsenal with that that downward facing line tie towards the back that's going to get you more hookups on those short striking fish another thing that you can find on some jigs is a weed guard so there's plastic weed guards there's wire weed guards like this one and these are going to help you obviously get through weed and wood cover much Slicker they're gonna bounce those weeds over the top of the hook yet when a fish bites down it's going to expose that hook point and you're gonna hook your fish now I wouldn't recommend using these if you aren't you fishing in heavy cover because they don't hook fish as well as a standard jig but man if you're losing a lot of jigs it can be a game changer to throw on one of these and not get hung up on the weeds or the brush as much now another thing that you can add to your Arsenal is a jig with a spinner on it so this one here this one has a spinner on the bottom of the jig just a little Colorado blade that spins as you pull it through the water adds a little bit of flicker a little bit of flash that can be really really good in low light conditions darker water bright sunny days when they fish are looking for that flash and you know walleyes like Spinners there's no question about it they've been suckers for spinners for years so just one more trick you can add to your bag and then also they have these helicopter Spinners which this is a Northland Whistler jig I believe is the name of it and that's got like a little helicopter blade and that blade will spin even at really really slow speeds so that Colorado spinner you're gonna have to move pretty fast to get that that spinner to move this one you can barely be creeping along and that blade is going to spin that's a really unique jig and a great way to catch fish that are looking for that flash one more thing that you can add to your jig or that that is added to jigs typically is some sort of holographic eyes so fish have been long known to key on ice and a more realistic holographic eye can really make the difference and a lot of times your your swim bait jigs or you know your minnow head jigs are going to have really realistic eyes on them as well so that's just one more thing you can add to your jig to make it realistic and then there's one more and that is a rattle so this is a kalin's Google eye jig and you can hear it's got a rattle in it it's it kind of bounces back and forth between the two glass eyes in there and a little bit of sound can really make the difference on days when the fish are are barely seeing the jig in that muddy water or for some reason they're just keying on sound like at night for instance another scenario where they hear that clunky clunk in there and hear that Rattle and that can attract fish as well so those are just some things you can add to a jig to make it a little bit more unique give it a little more flash a little more action a little more sound and that can really up your jig game to carry a few of those options with you so that's pretty much it for all your aspects of a jig that you need to know so let's get into a few specific applications of some of these Jigs and kind of get into what they're best at so let's start with the typical ball head jig now again this is one of those jigs I'm going to fish when there's just a a very easy fishing kind of vertical fishing a lot of times or short casts pitching jigs when I'm breaking off a lot of Jigs and having to re-tie them these are the cheapest jigs a lot of times they have a light wire hook and you can bend them right out of cover or rocks or brush just bend that hook back and reuse them you can snap them off and it's not the end of the world you know they're just a good all-around all-terrain jig to have in your box they come in all kinds of colors so they're very versatile and you should definitely have some round head jigs in Your Arsenal now a lot of times like I said before tungsten jigs only come in round because of the difficulty of molding tungsten so if you're going to use tungsten jigs they're most likely going to be around jigs now the pill head jig it's a really really good vertical presentation jig like I said if you're trying to fish a little bit more current or do like a cast and retrieve or fish in the river um you know that's a great jig to use to keep that bait tracking straight and these are also pretty economical a lot of times they also have light wire hooks they're just a little bit more designed for deeper water and current than those ball head jigs are I guess I find myself fishing these pill-shaped jigs more often than I do the ball head just because of those factors and that's been a really good jig for me if I'm you know casting at night and just pitching like little swim baits and stuff like that I oftentimes go to that pill head shape and this is also the shape that they use for moping so you know the recent Bassmaster Classic was just one by moping it's a great technique for walleyes pillowhead jigs are perfect for that because you're moving really slow and they keep that jig tracking straight so it's not going to spin on your hook as much and that's that's what they're really designed for if I'm gonna pitch real shallow to weed or wood cover or I'm fishing around brush piles and stuff like that where I know I'm gonna get hung up that's where I go to a weed guard hook and uh that's going to be pretty much the only time I use them but they really really come in handy for those situations um as far as a minnow shaped head if I know I'm going to be casting swim baits all day and fishing swim baits I'm going to go to a minnow style head because that's going to match up with my swim bait really well and I can just know that that profile is looking really really sharp and you don't have to worry about that profile being broken up and good option well I love those jigs I use them all the time like I said before a stand-up jig is a jig I'm always going to go to when I think the fish are going to be keying on bottom forage so if I'm dragging a jig if I'm doing short Hops and then twitching a jig in place I'm always going to use a stand up jig because that bait is going to be in a much easier to eat position when that fish comes along and sees it on the bottom it can pick that jig way easier than one actually laying on the bottom fish is going to have a hard time picking that up off the bottom if the jig is laying there but if it's standing upright in its face it's a no-brainer fish on if I am slip a slip float fishing and I want to use a jig I'm almost always going to use a pear-shaped jig like I said before it's going to keep it horizontal they typically have short Shanks a lot of these pear-shaped Jigs and that's perfect for fishing a live bait under slip flow that's my go-to and you can get those in some smaller weights as well like 16 ounce 30 second ounce eighth ounce to have that more slow fall presentation for your live bait and that that works really really well for a slip float now the Whistler jig this is a great jig for fishing in uh River situations and also I like to fish this jig in the evening or in the dark because it's got that extra that just that extra sound to it with that spinner and a little bit more vibration in the water and it's a keeled type jig so it's gonna track really straight and it's a great live bait jig as well uh just gives that live bait a little bit of extra kick and that's great great for that scenario now the Deep V jigs are great for fishing when you want that bait to get down there really really quickly and again you want to move use these on a faster moving situation you don't necessarily want to use these on the bottom because they'll tip over but that's a great jig for throwing swim baits on for throwing jig worms snap jigging anything like that that's a great jig style for that so you can pop that jig and it's not going to go way off to the side or spin on you and that's my preferred jig for those scenarios now obviously a stinger hook jig is going to be when I'm using a larger minnow so a bigger bait and I don't want the fish striking at the tail and not getting hooked that gives you a way to extend the length of your jig hook so if you don't have a long shank jig you can fish a shorter shank jig and still be hooking up those fish now I'll jig like this with the long long shank I'm gonna fish it like a jig worm with that you know so I get that hook back there far enough on The Jig worm and also if I'm double hooking my minnow and sliding that minnow forward and double hooking it it that's going to get that hook back there that's going to help you hook short striking fish so that's another option versus going with the Stinger hook and it works great as well but you don't get quite the live bait motion that you do with a stinger hook so it's more of a really dark water kind of fast-moving presentation when you're using live bait but you don't want it to come off the hook and it doesn't necessarily have to be alive and looking perfect it's a good good way to do that so that's what I would use the long shank jigs for alright guys that's pretty much it um I promised you I would I would tell you about the jig that I think is the most underrated jig and I would say that is the Deep V jig this jig is a really a newcomer to the market but it does a lot of things number one it gets down fast so it's going to cut through the water when it's dropping and it's going to get the same weight of jig to the bottom quicker so a lot of times when you're using live sonar you're marking fish or or side scanning fish and you can pitch to them and get that down there quick and that's really really important before those fish move to get the jig to them so that's one of the aspects number two it tracks like a pill head jig so it tracks really straight and it falls really fast when you're snap jigging it again it's not the best jig for laying on the bottom but horizontal presentations casting pitching is a great absolutely great style for that and I think a lot more guys should be using this style jigs so hopefully you guys got something out of this video and again I'm going to leave all these baits linked in the comments below so you can pick up any of these Jigs and thanks for watching guys like subscribe if you got something out of this here's another video to watch right here we'll see you next time get hooked up [Music] all right [Music] foreign