jigging

Hot Jigging..

We were skimming the waves at over twenty knots on board “Sushi” heading South by West out of Plymouth into the deeper reaches of the Western Approaches. Although this was just the end of November the air temperatures were cold enough that a thick fleece and a couple of jumpers were needed to keep warm. When it is this cold the winter fishing is usually at its best, but not this year, the Winter fishing had just not started on the inshore wrecks. The shoals of Pollack, Coalfish and to a lesser extent Cod had not moved up the Channel. So we were going out to the deeper water, to the 75 meter line, to see if the fish were shoaling up on the deep water wrecks. This slow start to the Winter fishing is a phenomenon which happens every few years and with the advent of “global warming” seems to be happening more frequently. The warm Atlantic fronts collide with the cold winds sweeping East from the Russian Steppes make very stormy conditions, usually occurring just about where we go fishing!! So during those years the opportunity to go out to the deep water occur less frequently, so when these “good weather windows” it is a case of drop everything and go fishing. We pinged one wreck after another with the echo sounder on the way out to the deep water, apart from pouting, whiting and small ling clustered on the bottom, they were barren. The clouds of fish which at this time of year we expect to find towering above the wrecks were just not there. Speeding further out into the deep blue our Lowrance sounder began to pick up fragmented shoals of fish in mid water. Stopping for a dip with the feathers we found some mackerel, herring and a few pilchards, but the big shoals which marked up on the sounder we could not catch with the feathers, these were sprats which had not yet started their migration up the channel. This was probably the reason why the predatory fish where still at this end of the Channel. Four hours on we were on the edge of the really deep water contour line, to a couple of wrecks which even the gill netters have yet to find and not surprisingly we found the fish. So the conclusion is simple. It looks as if we are going to have a short but explosive Winter season, ducking and weaving between the weather fronts. This situation is not the best, but if you want to fish you have to be ready to go at a moments notice, prepared to endure a bit of bad weather because in these unreliable conditions, the window of calm weather might last two days or a week if you are very lucky, even then you might find your boat running for home with a gale snapping at your transom!! We were tackled up with Snowbee boat rods, Accurate narrow spooled high speed reels and Tuff line braid, we were going jigging with some jigs that we had imported from Japan to try on the big fish that inhabit these deep water wrecks. Out in the big wide world “Deep Jigging” for tuna and other tropic species has led to a quiet evolution of a whole new generation of scientifically designed lures. This “new generation” of jigs have an eccentric cross section, plane faces and shapes which make them slip and slide through the water to give every flashy facet a chance to flicker and shine. No way does it represent a food item. It is this unknown flickering entity which raises the predatory, defensive instinct of the target fish. The fish do not even have to be feeding, this alien object is something which has to be dealt with, that means it has to be bitten as hard and fast as possible…..so your clutch needs to be set a bit on the light side, because when a 20lb Pollack, Coalfish or Cod hits into one of these crazy jigs, they really do go off on a screamer!! This is the prime reason why a properly set up lever drag reel is better for this job than a star drag. Push the lever right up to the maximum and set the drag, with the line threaded up the rod, somewhere between thirty to forty percent of the line breaking strain, whatever you are comfortable with. When the drag lever is backed off to the “strike” drag position, that is in front of the little spring loaded button, you will usually find that the drag weight is about half of what you set as the maximum. So if you set the maximum drag to ten pounds, the strike drag is usually about five pounds because of a heavy hit phenomena on these jigs, which has been observed in a number of different species of fish across the world. Bearing in mind that fish can see colour at depth, what are the best colours to choose for these jigs. Should it be a natural silver with mackerel stripes, orange and yellow to simulate a baby pout or something outrageous to really shake them up saying “I’m a threat, come and eat me!!” If we could predict that we would all buy one colour and consign the rest to history. But just the same as with other lures, some colours are good on one set of tides and a completely different colour is best on the next. Generally, mackerel and pearl, yellow and orange and surprisingly pink or purple are the colours that I favour. One thing that I do like to see, is big eyes on a jig, my theory is that eyes are the fishes aiming point when it is in attack mode. If the jig does not have eyes, then I buy some big fly tying eyes and stick them on with epoxy. Some of the Japanese jigs have small eyes at one end and a pair of different coloured, big eyes at the other. Just something to think about. The Americans and the Japanese anglers jig fish at tremendous depths to catch Tuna, reef and wreck dwelling fish. I read a story last week where some Japanese anglers were using heavy scrap iron weights to take their jigs down to 600 feet, where upon some slack line would clear the jig from the weight and they would fish the jig at those depths… and no they did not use electric reels!! Wreck anglers of my generation who fished the 2lb silver Norwegian Pirks of yesteryear, using high speed Penn Senator reels and Hardy Sidewinder or ABU Pacific rods of that era with forty or fifty pound breaking strain monofilament lines well remember the crippling exertion necessary to fish this gear to its capacity. Nowadays, the introduction of super braid has seen the deep jigging technique come back into favour because the weight of the pirk/jig can be reduced to nearly a quarter of what was necessary all those years ago. Tackle has been slow to catch up with this new technology, but small narrow spool reels with 6 to 1 retrieve speeds are now available from manufacturers such as Accurate which will hold over four hundred yards of 20 to 50 pound super braid line with some mono backing. Fast action rods from Snowbee and others can handle this hi-tech style of fishing which is long removed from the solid lead Cod rippers of yesteryear. Does this hi-tech deep jigging work in European waters??? Does daylight follow dark? of course it does. The French have been using 100 gram sandeel pirks for years to catch Bass, there is a select group of anglers on this side of the channel who have been using 180 and 200 gram pirks for several years to fish the deepwater wrecks for pollack, coalfish and cod…. there is no secret to it, they just do not broadcast the method… but now the story is in the public domain. Jigs such as the Shimano Butterfly, the Snowbee or the Smith Jack Knife are incredibly successful on European species, give them a try. I think you might be in for a good days fishing. Sushi tracked back to the start of the drift, we did not have to be that accurate there was wreckage all over the bottom, ideal ground for bottom feeding fish. I watched for a minute or so to see which way the drift was going to go, then cast my Jig fifty metres uptide with an underhand swing, so that by the time the wreck came up on the sounder my pirk would be more or less straight up and down. With superbraid the moment your pirk taps bottom there is a distinct tap feeling, two or three quick turns to clear the slack and you are fishing. I had slack line without the tap, reel like hell, it might be a net, I thought. The rod went over and for a moment it was one of those “blast it” moments. But then line started to peel from the reel and the stent in my heart gave a distinct lurch to starboard. Reel and pump, get it clear. I was using a 20lb outfit with full drag at a little over 7 pounds and the fish was still taking line… I really did not want to lose this one because I had felt the bump- bump-bump of a yellow skinned head- banger!! I had taken a lot of time over my knots, spent good money to get the tackle I wanted and it all paid off. After what seemed an age a Cod of 28 lb slid over the rim of the net and totally trashed it, fingers through the mesh of the net and it was inboard. “We needed an new net anyway, you’ve finally #####d that one”, said my fishing buddy Charles with a wide smile...