Barred Rock

marginal man

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Dec 21, 2013
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Here are a couple more old jigs. The original Crawford pattern was called "Barred Rock." There were two versions out, "Yellow Barred Rock" and "Natural Barred Rock." Pretty easy to guess which is which from the picture. These appear to be marabou of some type, but I'm not that familiar with specific materials. No description that I've found, but I did read where Jack stated, "I use a Du Pont acrylic lacquer on my Barred Rock jigs. All the rest of my jigs have a special pearlized finish that really gives a head a high glossy sheen."

These particular jigs are actually from a time point when Mister Twister was producing them under the "Nature Jigs" name. They held pretty close to all the original patterns from what I can tell, though I can't say if they stuck with all the same materials and prep that Jack used/did when he was tying them. Jack did tie them on Perfection heads, which he stated was far and away his most popular jig head, and Mister Twister did the same. The Nature Jigs were actually done under the name "Mister Jigs" and not Mister Twister. That name was filed for in 1979 and registered in 1981. It was cancelled in 2002, likely along with Mister Twister's venture into hair jigs. First use anywhere was listed as Oct. 01, 1977, and you can see a small pic of an ad from a 1977 magazine depicting this. As I mentioned, Gapen's World of Fishing was involved somehow from about 1975 on for at least a couple years. I hope to track down more specifics on that at some point.



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Pup

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Those may be coque rooster feathers from a barred rock chicken. The yellow ones are dyed I believe. Or, possibly, they could be hen saddles like those in the picture below.

hensaddle.jpg

Barred Rock Hen Saddles are often used for tying wet flies because of their softness.

Great little writeup. I'm enjoying the history. It's stimulating. I may have to visit the vise later this week. Have a bunch of barred coque feathers that might be soft enough to create my own versions of those particular jigs. I believe that I may have the hen saddles as well, but have to check my pegboard and storage cabinets.

I like that the jigs are tied with round threads, not 'flat waxed' as is usually seen today. Maybe the threads were waxed with paraffin or beeswax, before or during tying, to hold the feathers more securely.

The maker(s) didn't worry about clearing jig eyelets either. Left that task to the fisherman. ;)
 

marginal man

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Dec 21, 2013
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If you look closely in the upper left corner of the Mister Jigs ad, you'll notice two jigs tied on Pow'RR heads. That was a change that they did and not a Crawford tie. Jack only tied on 4 different heads; google eyes, banana, scoop, and perfection. Though the perfection outsold them all, Jack personally liked the scoop best. Best I can tell, the Pow’RR Head, which was a stand-up jig head, was created around the early or mid 1970s. Mar Lynn developed it, and along with the Reaper style soft plastic (actually developed by Harold Ensley in the 1950s and manufactured by Mar Lynn/Ted Green), it quickly got a following in the upper Midwest and Northeast. The late Tony Portincaso kind of put that combination on the national map when he wrote several articles in early Fishing Facts about fishing submerged weed lines in natural lakes with the combo, especially for pike. Mister Twister started putting some of their ties on that head style back in the late 1970s after acquiring the line of Crawford jigs. You can see a few more like that in the following ad;

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