Bass Jigs: The Nine Types, Which Weight and Trailer, How to Fish Them

A bass jig is a lead or tungsten head on a single hook, dressed with a rubber or silicone skirt, usually guarded by a fiber weedguard and fished with a soft-plastic trailer. There are nine types, and each head does a job the others cannot. A football head slides over rock, a pointed swim jig slips through grass, a scoop-headed skipping jig planes under a dock. If you buy one, make it a 3/8 or 1/2 oz casting jig in green pumpkin or black and blue.

On the last day of the 2017 Bassmaster Classic, mechanical trouble pinned Jordan Lee to one offshore spot. He slowed down with a football jig, caught over 27 pounds from a 30-yard area, and won.

Which jig for which job?

The nine are football, finesse, skipping, flipping, casting, swim, grass, hair and vibrating. Six of them do most of the work. Adult largemouth feed almost only on fish and large invertebrates such as crayfish. So a jig with a craw trailer is the crayfish; with a swimming trailer it is a bluegill or a shad.

If you could have only one jig, make it a regular Arkie-style casting jig. By BassResource’s reckoning, standard Arky jigs have likely caught more bass than any other jig style, and the most-used sizes are 3/8 and 1/2 oz. A casting jig can be skipped under a dock, flipped into a laydown and dragged through brush. The jigs hub sets every jig side by side, and the rigs hub covers the soft-plastic rigs.

What about skipping, grass and bladed jigs?

Skipping jigs are built to skim across the surface under docks and limbs. They have a horizontal eye, a scoop-shaped head with most of the weight on a planing surface, a medium weedguard and a stout round-bend hook. They come mostly in green, brown or black, because under a dock you are imitating bluegill and crawfish, not shad.

Grass jigs are the big brother of the swim jig and the grass-flipping jig. They have pointed heads, more weight, and beefier hooks and weedguards; the Medlock Jig had two weedguards. They are flipped into hydrilla clumps, reeds and mats, and they are among the most seldom-used jigs in bass fishing.

Vibrating jigs add a hinged blade to the front of a jig, and some anglers say that blade disqualifies them from the category. They are reeled through the water column, from a foot of water out to 20 ft (6 m); the chatterbait pages cover them.

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Flipping jig or football jig?

The difference is the head and the cover. A football head is the widest of all, so it keeps contact with a hard bottom. It slides over rocks where a pointed head would wedge in the cracks. That makes it a dragging jig for clean bottom, rock and offshore structure.

A flipping jig is built to go into cover. It is beefier, with a bigger, stouter hook and a thicker weedguard, often in 3/4 and 1 oz to get through branches. Its head comes in two shapes. A pointed one sheds grass but hangs in wood; a rounder Arkie-style head comes through wood and rock without wedging.

So drag the football where the bottom is hard and clean. Flip the flipping jig into anything you can see.

How heavy, and lead or tungsten?

Weight follows depth and cover, and the rule is bottom contact: keeping the jig on the bottom is one of the biggest keys to deep jig fishing. Go lighter for shallow water and heavier for deep. These are the anchors from the pros:

• Football: Jordan Lee calls a 3/4 oz “a good all-purpose size,” fished “from 3 feet to 30 feet deep.” Others start at 1/2 oz.
• Full-size and finesse: Matt Arey ties on a 1/2 or 5/8 oz jig for big largemouth. Where spotted bass and smallmouth live too, he uses a 5/16 or 7/16 oz finesse jig. After a harsh cold front, he says, finesse wins.
• Reaction: a slightly heavier jig falls faster and draws reaction bites from aggressive summer fish.

Tungsten is 19.3 g/cm³ against lead’s 11.35, so a tungsten head is about 59% the size of a lead head of the same weight. The smaller head slips through cover and transmits more of the bottom.

It also matters for the law. New Hampshire has banned lead jigs of 1 oz or less in all fresh water since June 1, 2016, skirted or painted. Maine bans unpainted lead jigs of 1 oz or less, or 2.5 in or shorter. Painted lead jigs that size can no longer be sold there, and since Sept. 1, 2026, they cannot be used on inland waters either. In the fresh water of both states a lead casting jig is now illegal, and tungsten is the way around it.

Which trailer and which color?

Trailers set the fall and the action. The rule for football jigs works for all of them: the warmer the water, the more action. Use a twin-tail grub or a craw with flapping claws as the water warms, and a chunk or beaver-style bait as it cools. A flipping jig takes a craw or creature bait, a finesse jig a small chunk or grub, a swim jig a paddle-tail swimbait or grub. Thread the trailer on straight against the keeper molded on the collar.

Colors stay simple. Matt Arey fishes a shade of green pumpkin 95% of the time, and switches to black and blue only in very dirty water. A handful of jigs in green pumpkin and black and blue covers most situations. Swim jigs are the exception: white or shad colors when bass are feeding on baitfish. Hair jigs split by size: small black marabou for northern smallmouth, big white bucktail for southern ledge fish feeding on shad.

How do you fish each one?

1. Football jig on rock. Cast past the structure and drag the jig slowly so the head rolls and the trailer stands up. In summer, add sharp snaps of the rod tip. Lee fishes his on a 7 ft 4 in (2.2 m) heavy rod and 17 lb fluorocarbon.
2. Flipping jig in cover. Flip or pitch it into the reeds, the brush or the laydown, let it fall straight down and watch the line for subtle movement on the way down. Arey yo-yos it for a second or two to keep it in a small strike zone. Use a stout rod, heavier line or braid, and a hard hookset to get a big fish out.
3. Casting jig on docks and points. Skip it under docks or cast it to points and brush, then drag or hop it home. Slow and steady in cold water, a more aggressive hop when the water is warm.
4. Skipping jig under docks. A low sidearm cast bounces it across the surface into the shade. The scoop head is what makes it skip instead of dive.
5. Swim jig through grass. Reel it steadily, vary the speed, and twitch or pause it to trigger a strike. Think of it as a spinnerbait without a blade arm.
6. Finesse jig on rock. A slow, deliberate drag that never loses the bottom, on fluorocarbon, around rocks, docks and light vegetation. Arey drops to 12 lb line when he drags it deeper than 15 ft (4.6 m).
7. Hair jig for cold smallmouth. Bounce it along the bottom or swim it just above. In very cold water a silicone skirt clumps and barely moves; hair keeps breathing. Jigs of 1/4 oz or less go on spinning tackle.

What does a jig bite feel like?

Many bites come as the jig falls, and they are subtle. Watch the line on the way down, and set the hook on any small movement that looks different.

Set the hook hard. For football jigs, a 7:1 to 8:1 reel keeps the line tight after the hookset, on a rod of 7 ft 3 in (2.2 m) or longer, medium-heavy to heavy. The rods and fluorocarbon line pages cover the choices.

Which jigs win, and which to buy?

Bill Lowen won the Bassmaster Elite event on the St. Johns River in February 2025 with 73 lb 14 oz. His two baits were a 3/8 oz Bill Lowen Signature Series jig with a Zoom Super Chunk, and a 5/16 oz Lowen swim jig with a Zoom Super Speed Craw, both in Blue Craw. Tucker Smith won the Lake Fork Elite in May with 127 lb 8 oz. His key baits were a jighead minnow and a Yamamoto Yama Craw on a 3/4 oz Picasso football head. The best bass lures page carries the season’s whole list.

For the jigs themselves, Shaye Baker’s buyer’s guide at Wired2Fish names these by type:

When does something else win?

When bass are chasing shad in open water, cover water with a spinnerbait, a chatterbait or a crankbait. For pressured bass in clear water, a Ned rig is a smaller bait still than a finesse jig. When the jig keeps hanging up in thick grass, a Texas rig with a pegged weight goes through.

The bass hub has where all three bass are in each season, which tells you where to drop the jig.

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