Just because you have clear water doesn’t mean that you can’t power fish. Sure there will always be a finesse bite where you can catch them on senkos, shakeyheads, and dropshot. When the conditions get right though you can put some impressive fish in the boat with a technique called swimming a jig. A lot more anglers are starting to utilize this technique more and more but a lot of times the bass haven’t seen a jig presented in this manner.

A jig doesn’t have all the flash of a spinnerbait and can sometimes be the trick on highly pressured clear water bass. Swimming a jig seems to produce all day long but the best times for me have been early in the morning or in the evening when the bass seem to be more willing to chase. The retrieve I start with is pretty quick where the jig is swimming right under the surface back to the boat. I like to give the jig a couple of pumps with the rod to give the jig some more action and make it look more erratic and injured. Fishing a jig just under the surface in clear water is one of the most exciting things you can do. Most of the time you will see a bass closing in on the jig and then you get to watch them just inhale it. You want to wait about a second after he hits then drive the hooks home. I really like fishing a 1/4 oz Pig Sticker Baxter Jig when I’m doing this. It’s an eyeball jig that really catches the attention of the bass. Make sure you bring your sunglasses because you want to be able to see into the water for followers so you can give your jig a little twitch to make them commit. I really like my Flying Fisherman’s for cutting the glare. If fishing a jig just under the surface doesn’t produce I’ll tie a heavier one on say a 1/2 oz and reel it back a little deeper.
If the last two retrieves fail to produce one other thing to do is tie on a 3/4 oz Pig Sticker Scrawler or a Quick Five jig and swim it along the bottom like a crankbait getting it to deflect off the rocks. The cool thing about the Scrawler jig is that you can bend the wires out so that the jig hops over the rocks better than anything else on the market. I’ve caught so many fish this year just ticking the bottom with a football jig that I really don’t want give this little trick away. For colors in my jigs a Pb&j skirt pattern works great or a smoke shad skirt. You want to try and make your bait look as natural as possible.

There are a couple of things I’ll do to my jigs before I hit the lake. One trick that seems to help with hookups is tying your skirts with a red keeper on them. It is right behind the head like a gill and the fish seem to hit harder. I tie all my skirts up with the Naked Bait Company skirt expander so I get to customize my baits a little more. If your fishing limited cover you can also feel free to add a trailer hook to your jig. I like to think of swimming a jig as fishing a spinnerbait without the blades. You don’t need a really thick weed guard so you can thin it out a little too to increase the hookups. Probably the best trailer I’ve found for swimming a jig is the NetBait Paca Chunk. The kick these give off looks amazing in the water. You want to make sure you have the right set up too for the technique. I like to throw at least 15lb test line because the fish don’t have the time to see it anyways with this technique. When you’re crashing rocks with your jig you want to have a line that will stand up to the scrapes. I use a 7 foot medium heavy AiRRUS Ultra XL rod for swimming a jig. It has the right action to make the longer casts for clear water. Whatever rod you go with make sure you have the backbone to drive the hooks home.