What to do with reject jigs?

I tied a really nice looking jig this evening and after I was done, realized that I had tied the jig upside down!! I wanted white for the belly and red for the top! D'oh!

I mean, I'll try it,.. But wished I had tied it the right way. Also when you tie jigs and find they don't really catch fish. What do you do with them?

Give em away?


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Throw it in the snaggiest place you think a fish would sit. If you lose it, it doesn't sting as bad.

Lmao!!!


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If it is still in my box while out fishing and has proven to be a lemon of a jig...... it gets fished in the nasty spots as Bucko mentioned. Majority of my fishing areas are on manmade lakes, usually means letting it get down deep along the transition from the main lake mud basin up to the rip-rap. The rip-rap eats many of my jigs.

If it comes off the vise and is not how i visioned in my head................

re-gifting comes to mind ...

Rock ledges hold lots of hungry fish. Unfortunately they are often a 1 cast proposition and you catch a fish or get hung in the rocks, with 4# fluoro it is easy to simply break off, try a new selection and move on. If it is a head I really liked, razor blade makes removal of tied materials an easy task.

Looks may not be essential to a jig's efficacy. Some of the most successful jig tiers I know make, um, less than neat looking jigs, one of whom is on our forum. Trout being my best opportunity here at this time, I've been comparative testing head styles & tie colors/designs and nothing seems to stand out as better than others for bite attraction. Some succesful local jiggers, Steve & Maynards' ties are hard to distinguish from weed hangs.

Trout anyway aren't particular about appearance - this jig retired after an 18 fish session, not counting the day before, probably could have kept producing.

View attachment 9

There are days when the fish will hit anything you toss out there. And if that doesn't work, they go under the knife in the winter months....

Where's the picture of your bad jig? To me there is no such thing. Some may be prettier than others but the ugly duckling will out fish the "pretty" ones at times. Wish I had some of my jigs from twenty years ago when I first started tying. They caught fish back then. Can't remember what they looked like anymore.

Use it and see what happens. I did this once and tossed it in my personal stash and fished it till the hair fell out. It turned out to be a good mistake...

Just fish it and let the fish tell you if they like it or not - after that give it to a kid or cut the material off and tie something else.

I like it! Just wished I'd of done the colours reverse

I like your jig and Esox spp. will too. Cast it to pike.

dmm26 said:

I like it! Just wished I'd of done the colours reverse

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I wouldn't sweat that 'mistake' one bit. Reversed colors may be just the ticket to catch a fish's attention.

Everyone has made great points so far but I'll add another: Those of us on the "dry side" are dealing with 'exacts' when we create our tackle. Exact colors, patterns, lengths and so forth. The "wet side" is an infinite variable. Meaning that nothing is hard and fast, or ever exact. There is so much variation in nature [even among the same species] that pretty much anything within reason is viable as a presentation.

Like I said, I'll definitely fish it at least a few times.
I'm not super upset about it at all.
Just wished I had done it reverse