Jig making time

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MrTom

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Too darned cold to be out on the range so its a good time to start filling some of the empty cells in the crappie jig box. These are 1/16 and 1/8 ounce. The mold is a Do-It Shiner Diner, new this year. Casts very clean and easy and they paint up real nice. I'm sure the crappies are going to enjoy them.

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Dang deer hunt shoot deer cutup deer smoke deer then deer dogs and now make jigs your really makin me tired. Hope my wife don't read this I've got her convinced that it's to cold to do anything and I need a rest after hunting season.
 
And I inject my own plastic baits too. Retirement is a dog I tell ya. lol
 
Man those look great Mr Tom. I would be you would be hard pressed to find anything made commercially that looks better than your baits. :yeah:

Retirement?? :huh?: Whats that, thought that was a thing of the past. :roll:
 
They look really good!! An old family friend use to pour Jigs for Crappie fishing, i stil have several that he made, i wish i knew what jig head mold i needed to duplicate these? If I remember right he used a different than recommended hook in the mold as he liked them better. It wasn’t long ago i seen a Catalog that was absolutely packed with everything you could imagine for making your own baits, jigs, spinners, etc.

MrTom, You do a VERY nice job!!
 
Thanks guys. I'm 67 years old and have been casting jigs since I was 14. I started with a mold made of oak that made 1/8 ounce or so heads. I still have that mold buried somewhere in all my old stuff and the last head I cast in it is almost 3/8 ounce given the burn out.

I'll be honest here....I have an affiliation with the company that makes this mold and the others I have or may show. I don't sell many jigs any more, or the plastic baits I make for that matter. I just enjoy the challenge offered in crafting my own tackle. I've always loved to work with color in one fashion or another and the mediums I use to make my tackle simply afford a limitless amount of color. The baits I make using the company's various molds, mostly new styles such as these jigs shown, and other components get pictures taken and posted on their web-site's interactive forums much like this site. Every once in a while I come up with a picture that's worthy of sharing here.

The jigs shown here are headed to my crappie box for next spring's festivities.
 
MrTom said:
Thanks guys. I'm 67 years old and have been casting jigs since I was 14. I started with a mold made of oak that made 1/8 ounce or so heads. I still have that mold buried somewhere in all my old stuff and the last head I cast in it is almost 3/8 ounce given the burn out.

I'll be honest here....I have an affiliation with the company that makes this mold and the others I have or may show. I don't sell many jigs any more, or the plastic baits I make for that matter. I just enjoy the challenge offered in crafting my own tackle. I've always loved to work with color in one fashion or another and the mediums I use to make my tackle simply afford a limitless amount of color. The baits I make using the company's various molds, mostly new styles such as these jigs shown, and other components get pictures taken and posted on their web-site's interactive forums much like this site. Every once in a while I come up with a picture that's worthy of sharing here.

The jigs shown here are headed to my crappie box for next spring's festivities.


MrTom, What is your favorite weight head, and body for Crappie? I’m sure it varies with Water color, time of year etc. Here in Northern Idaho i use Shad bodies of various colors, Brown, Black and silver seem to work best, and anytime of the year for me. I fish Lilly Pad beds with a really long pole (13 ft) in the Spring when the Crappie are staging to spawn, the males are REALLY dark (called wearing their Tuxedo) I absolutely LOVE fishing for Crappie, And Without a Doubt they are my favorite fish to eat.
 
I guess a lot for me would depend on the size of the crappies and the size of the bait or plastic. Personally I don't use any live bait, only plastics.

The average crappie around home here is between 10 1/2" to 13" and really depends on which body of water I am fishing. I fish the Mississippi River and the backwaters extensively and find crappies to 17" occasionally but 13 to 15 are more common on the big river. Local lakes I like a 1/32 head and a plastic to about 1 1/2" in length. The river fish I will use heads up to about 1/8 and plastics to 3".

Color-wise, a purple head and a purple body with a chartreuse tail. Ironically I don't fish a solid chartreuse plastic or a black one and darned few times will I use a plastic bait having any white in it. I don't use black heads and seldom fish a head with white on it.
 
MrTom said:
I guess a lot for me would depend on the size of the crappies and the size of the bait or plastic. Personally I don't use any live bait, only plastics.

The average crappie around home here is between 10 1/2" to 13" and really depends on which body of water I am fishing. I fish the Mississippi River and the backwaters extensively and find crappies to 17" occasionally but 13 to 15 are more common on the big river. Local lakes I like a 1/32 head and a plastic to about 1 1/2" in length. The river fish I will use heads up to about 1/8 and plastics to 3".

Color-wise, a purple head and a purple body with a chartreuse tail. Ironically I don't fish a solid chartreuse plastic or a black one and darned few times will I use a plastic bait having any white in it. I don't use black heads and seldom fish a head with white on it.


No white huh? That is my dad’s absolute favorite ‘Go to’ Color for Crappie, His favorite is a little Split tail Jig, it is a bright Red body with a white head, and white tipped tails, I have also done very good with that Jig! The problem is they dont last long, about 3-4 fish and the legs get torn up badly, if not torn off, My Shad out lasts the little split tail jigs 10 fold. If you get in to a bunch of little perch and sunfish they will destroy your finesse type jigs by picking and pecking them apart
 
Perch can be pretty handy at tearing things apart as can the sunnies.
 
Speaking of perch, here are the other larger sizes of the jigs with one in the lower left corner done in a perch pattern. These range in size from 3/16 ounce to 3/8.

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Tom could melt the pb s and make more jigs. Good idea.

Sent from my ME301T using Tapatalk
 
The lead they use in powerbelts doesn't work in that applicatiuon and probably would be a waste of time trying to get it to work in a jig mold too. Best just shoot those pb's off into the night sky and hope they fall of north korea's head dunce's head.
 
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