Glow

[Fast Freddy]

Hello. I was wondering what some guys/ gals use to add glow to their lures. On my jigheads, I simply powder coat them where i want it to glow. Not sure what people are doing on cranks, spoons.. All input appreciated.

[BobP]

I coat jigging spoons with an acrylic latex based glow paint.  It's glow particles are too big to pass through an airbrush so I paint it on in several heavy coats with a brush and then coat it with MCU.  It gives off a very bright glow when jigging deep for winter bass.

[Fast Freddy]

Thanks Bob. I'm assuming you put the glow on over the base coat then clearcoat..

[BobP]

Yep, I shoot a white acrylic basecoat and then brush on the glow.  I think a white basecoat is recommended for all glow paints and it makes a big difference in how much glow you get from the process.

[A-Mac]

Tell me more about this deep spoon jigging for winter bass!  Are you using a flutter spoon?  I'm curious, so any info would be cool. Thanks!

[RayburnGuy]

Using a jigging spoon isn't just a wintertime deal. I used to keep a jigging spoon tied on a rod 24/7/365. They will catch pretty much any fish that eats. There have been times where I've caught largemouth, catfish, drum, sand bass, hybrid stripers and white bass without ever moving the boat. And they aren't just for vertical jigging either. I've caught bass by casting them onto shell bed flats and sand bars in water that was as little as 2' deep. If your fishing around timber or stumps vertical jigging is the way to go because casting a bare treble into that kind of cover is just asking for trouble. If you hang a jigging spoon up 9 times out of 10 you can get it back as long as you don't set the hook too hard. Just get directly over the bait and jiggle it so the heavy body is moving up and down over the top of the hung hook and it will usually knock the hook out of whatever it's hung in.

 

Anytime I marked a group of fish on the bottom and couldn't get them to hit anything else I would get right over the top of them and pump a jigging spoon right in their faces. That's another thing about jigging spoons. If you've got your sonar set right you can see the jigging spoon working up and down and sometimes even see the fish moving towards it before they hit. Sometimes they want it to jump up 3 feet or more while other times they want it barely moving. I've even heard of guys fishing it by holding it rock solid and just letting the twist in the line make the spoon spin. I could usually fish it slow if need be, but never had THAT much patience.

 

The jigging spoon is like any other bait you not fished much, but I can guarantee if you ever start catching fish on them you won't leave the dock without them.

 

Ben

Edited December 12, 2013 by RayburnGuy

[Fast Freddy]

We target walleye through the ice in Michigan.. Swedish pimples. Little Cleo's.. Do jiggers all catch there fair share jigged vertically up to 30 ft. Like Rayburn Guy said, nothin better than watching your spoon & fish do the dance on a good sonar screen..

[BobP]

A-Mac, for deep water jigging, say down to 60 ft, I like a compact heavy spoon like these:   http://lurepartsonline.com/Shop-By-Category/Jigging-Spoons/Jigging-Minnow.html.  For 50 ft jigging, I personally like a 3/4 oz spoon.  For 25 ft or less, 1/2 oz.  They mimic small threadfin shad that school in the winter and which fish that eat shad congregate around:  largemouth, smallmouth, white bass, stripers, crappie etc.  In the best of times, it's like Ben says, a completely vertical presentation:  find shad schools with larger fish around them, get over them and drop the spoon down, jigging it with whatever pumping action it takes to get bit.  90% of bites come as the spoon falls after pumping it, so you want to keep contact with the spoon or get a rhythm going so you know when the spoon will hit bottom again.  If it doesn't, set the hook!  You can often see the spoon on sonar, see a fish approach it - bang.  It's video game fishing at its finest and you can sometimes catch a fish every cast!  If the shad have been scattered or have been forced to the surface, you don't want to run through them or you will kill the action.  Then you get on the periphery of the action, cast the spoon in and hop it off the bottom during a slow retrieve.  With so much line in the water, a bite feels often feels like someone attached a rubber band to your spoon.  And sometimes you feel nothing as a fish bites the spoon as it falls, but the next time you pump the spoon up, you find it's attached to a bass.

 

At the local lake I fish most often, largemouth and white bass predominate and they never drive shad schools to the surface so it's all happening deep and sonar is essential to find the action.  At a large reservoir that has stripers, we look for flocks of gulls that attack the shad from above when stripers force a school to the surface.  One thing I've found to be consistently true:  Whatever the species, the larger fish tend to loiter at the edges of the action while younger bass constitute the main attack force.  On my local lake, mobs of white bass attack the shad and the largemouth loiter.  On a striper lake, the small ones are in the thick of the melee and the big ones are on the periphery.

 

Tackle:  I put a bunch of white glow paint on my jigging spoons, topcoat them with DN, and add a flashaboo dressed treble.  I'm fishing 50+ feet at my local lake and the heavy glow really attracts bites in very deep water.  Jigging spoons that come with wire hangers are a lot easier to paint and install split rings on.  I've basically stopped buying any other design. Other:  I use a baitcaster with 14 lb fluorocarbon, a 6'6" to 7' fast action rod, and tie direct to the spoon without a swivel.  Jigging spoons typically don't spin enough to cause line twist problems.

 

Flutter spoons are a whole 'nother deal.  I defer to a Texas boy like Ben (they first became popular in Texas) to comment on them.

[BobP]

Here are a couple of glow painted jigging spoons that I like to use for winter-time jigging.  I most often use the top 3/4 oz spoon, switch to the smaller 1/2 oz model in water shallower than 25 ft.

[BobP]

Here are a couple of glow painted jigging spoons that I like to use for winter-time jigging.  I most often use the top 3/4 oz spoon, switch to the smaller 1/2 oz model in water shallower than 25 ft.

[saltshaker]

Those look nice, Bob.

[Nathan]

Bob,

Is the flashabou you added to the one glow in the dark too?...Nathan

[RayburnGuy]

As far as the amount of line twist I think it depends on the type of spoon your fishing. Lonnie Standley put out a spoon a number of years ago that would literally tie knots in your line. It had an insane amount of action and fishing it with a swivel tied above the spoon was pretty much essential.

 

You definitely have to keep in contact with the spoon, but it has to fall on slack line or the spoon isn't going to have any action. It sounds much harder to do than it actually is and like Bob said most of the time your not going to feel the bite since it's usually on the fall when they hit it. And also as he said there will be times when you go to make your next sweep up with the rod and there will be a fish attached.

 

I also prefer a shorter rod so there's not as much leverage working against you all the time. Fishing a 3/4 oz. jigging spoon can get really tiring after a while. Especially if your catching quite a few fish. I don't fish a jigging spoon as deep as Bob. Most of our lakes just aren't that clear so rarely do our bass congregate that deep. I mostly fished 1/2 and 3/4 oz. C.C. or Hopkins spoons depending on what the fish wanted. Sometimes they want something with a little faster fall and sometimes they didn't.

 

I've fished jigging spoons on both mono and braid. Fishing braid didn't seem to be a problem with our water clarity. Fluorocarbon was not an option back in the day. I ended up using braid most of the time because you had a better chance of getting your spoon back once it got hung. And believe me you WILL get hung up.  If you can't use the weight of the spoon to get itself unhung the strength of the braid will sometimes allow you to straigthen the hook out. It's a lot cheaper to replace a hook than it is the whole jigging spoon.

 

One thing that is popular down our way in the winter is to follow the edges of a creek, or river, and jig the timber on those edges. You might go a mile or more and catch little, if anything, and then hit a spot where you can load the boat. I've had days where I've caught 50 to 60 bass in one creek bend in a little over an hour.

 

I can promise you one thing. If you get yourself a few jigging spoons and put in the time it takes to learn how to fish them, as well as where to fish them, you won't be dissapointed.

 

Ben

[BobP]

Nathan, no, it's regular flashaboo.  The spoon gives off enough light that it lights up the flashaboo too.  When I say "lots of glow paint", I really pile it on - 4 coats of viscous glow paint as thick as I can brush it on the spoon.  What glows are the strontium aluminate particles suspended in the paint.  The larger and more numerous the particles, the more glow you get but the grainier the paint is.  The paint I used from Glo-Nation would never pass through an airbrush but I can honestly read a newspaper by its greenish glow in a dark room.  Different colors glow for different lengths of time, from 1/2 hr to 13 hrs.  I used green that glows the longest.  It looks white until you get it in a dark room and the green glow is apparent.

 

As much as I like other fishing presentations, I confess I have a special love of spoon jigging.  There simply isn't a way to catch winter bass faster under the right conditions and it catches all sizes of fish, including really big ones.  Another tip:  if you depend on your sonar to find shad schools (and you should), don't waste time jigging shad schools unless you see larger fish around them.  I wasted a lot of time doing that when I started spoon jigging.  I have a big Humminbird sonar on the console that works great to find shad schools and it can scan a big swath of the bottom with its sidescan capability.  But the little 12 yr old Garmin 480 unit on the bow works just as well to show what the shad are doing, if larger fish are present, and it can track my spoon up and down as I jig it.  The ideal sonar picture is a cloud of shad with what looks like a bunch of big worms piled up underneath and around them.  Those "worms" are the bass feeding on the school.  Not saying that other tactics don't work very well too (blind jigging specific structure and cover, even trolling spoons), but this guarantees hot and heavy bass catching in winter.