jiggerjohn
Active member
- Joined
- Mar 23, 2010
- Messages
- 547
Last weekend my son & I headed up to Lake Erie (Vermilion,Ohio) to do some serious vertical jigging for our favorite light tackle fish, the Freshwater Drum. Yeah, we got a lot of flack from the locals about targeting the lowly (in their limited opinions!) "Sheepshead", but after sore wrists derived from playing the hard diving, densely muscled fish-around 300 pounds worth- we were quite content with the VERY frequent battles ! In fact, we've determined that the major difference from our vertical jigging for crappies on Pymatuning vs vertical jig methods on sheep, is that the Erie fish can be 10 or more times bigger than any panfish and more seriously strain our drags and 4-6# test mono!
Calm conditions on the big lake helped, but we merely had to row out (motor proved inoperative), locate a rock pile on the 9-11' breakline, and lower jigs straight down (sometimes a split shot 6" upline in slight wind&wave movement). We used the same 1/28 oz wool/satin jigs with super sharp no. 8 VMC hooks (jigheads from Hawnjigs) that we employ for crappie& trout. A piece of live crayfish (better than the whole critter,we found -the wooly jig completed the crab "look"!) was a non-fail tipping.Positioning above a rock hump below, we'd often just get a slight twitch to indicate a take-very subtle usually-then we'd slight lift into real weight- the tiny hooks were a key to constantly stinging the delicate takers! Lake fish of size have some serious endurance,as our battles on the biggest lasted quite a while!
Why do these wonderful fighters get so much disrespect?? IMO they are THE ideal light tackle jigging fish, and reach bodyweights (at record levels) which rival muskies (yet Drum are hardly the "fish of 10,000 casts" as muskies can be; more like the fish of TEN casts if on a good rock pile!!).
Calm conditions on the big lake helped, but we merely had to row out (motor proved inoperative), locate a rock pile on the 9-11' breakline, and lower jigs straight down (sometimes a split shot 6" upline in slight wind&wave movement). We used the same 1/28 oz wool/satin jigs with super sharp no. 8 VMC hooks (jigheads from Hawnjigs) that we employ for crappie& trout. A piece of live crayfish (better than the whole critter,we found -the wooly jig completed the crab "look"!) was a non-fail tipping.Positioning above a rock hump below, we'd often just get a slight twitch to indicate a take-very subtle usually-then we'd slight lift into real weight- the tiny hooks were a key to constantly stinging the delicate takers! Lake fish of size have some serious endurance,as our battles on the biggest lasted quite a while!
Why do these wonderful fighters get so much disrespect?? IMO they are THE ideal light tackle jigging fish, and reach bodyweights (at record levels) which rival muskies (yet Drum are hardly the "fish of 10,000 casts" as muskies can be; more like the fish of TEN casts if on a good rock pile!!).