I don't know about ya'll, but I hate ice. And I don't ice fish. But I'm not dumb enough to not know that an awful lot of ice fishing lures catch fish in the open water. I have two boxes full of vertical ice jigs , all right around 1/32 to 1/16 ounce, in my open water bucket tackle emporium and I find myself using those jigs a lot during the open water season.
Clam outdoors came out with a new vertical jig this year that I thought looked interesting....until I saw what the stores were getting for them. I thought to myself....dang, I can make something darned near a copy of those clam thingamajigs. So I called my good buddy Brennan to see what the good guys had in stocks and put these two little gems together this morning.
The bodies are nickel plated brass bodies, item number 2900, 1/13 ounce. I also got body number 2906, which is 1/16 and ringed. Using coil stock stainless wire found at Do-IT, item number 5503, size .012", I cut 6 inch lengths. I made a closed ring in one end and attached a #3 Do-It split ring. The wire was fed thru the body, a bend made to hold the other split ring and then twisted closed. Lastly the #12, style 35647 Mustad treble hook was fed into the lower ring and the excess wire snipped off the top.
I used Pro Tec to paint the bodies. A friend has an air bed and is going to take the remaining bodies and paint them according to my color choices so the real finish coat will be much cleaner than what's shown here. I timed myself and it took me less than 8 minutes to paint 4 bodies, cut , bend, twist and add the trebles. These are time efficient.
Tipped with a plastic, think the larger wax wiggler, these will make crappies foam at the mouth....not only in open water but under that ice as well. This will be an aggressive bait in either venue but then that's all I fish anymore. That tiny jig teasing crap is for old ladies. These jigs will call those nice slabs that have the feed bag on. So....got time on your hands during this dreary white weather and want to wrap something up that will compliment both your winter and summer tackle collection? Wrap a few of these up and go catch fish.
