I'll never forget the first bass I caught on a football jig, it literally changed me forever. For whatever reason it didn't come easy to me, perhaps it was because I was so green that I can recall flipping Maynard's boat docks on Minnesota's, Lake Minnetonka with a football jig, definitely not the best choice in a jig but as I said, nothing ever came easy to me.
Though and behold, I did manage to put two and two together and remember like it was yesterday my first bass that I clothes-lined with a ½ oz. football head. I was on Cook's Bay on Lake Minnetonka's west end. Lowrance Structure Scan wasn't available just yet and I was forced to try to figure out where these hard bottom areas were by studying my Navionics Mapping Chip and actually fishing all the underwater points and humps. What a concept right? Actually needing to fish to practice! A lot has changed in just a few short years; I'm surprised I ever managed to catch fish without my Structure Scan.
** Josh Douglas showing off his go-to football jig setup and his hand-tied Outkast Touch Down JIg and new G Loomis GLX series jig rod.**
I recall making the perfect cast to the very edge of the grass line, I snapped the jig free off the grass and as the jig fell from the grass and started banging into the rocks I felt that infamous "tick". I swung back and loaded into a solid 4 pound largemouth! I can honestly say to this day, I've never been the same.
That day changed me forever. I caught that fish on the first cast but after making the same cast about ten times in a row, I managed to catch at least a half dozen fish all three pounds or better. I went from being a shallow water flipper and boat dock skipper to a legit deep water fisherman in a very short time.
Ever since that day, I lean on a football head jig as one of my go-to baits as I continue to climb the ladder of professional bass fishing. Now living in Tennessee and fishing the giant reservoirs that litter the Tennessee River, I use a football head as much as any other bait and there's no better than the Outkast Touch Down Jig. No matter where I'm at in the country, the Touch Down Jig comes through the thickest cover and is virtually snag free over the nastiest of structures and the stout hook insures excellent penetration on long casts.
I've also learned to fine tune my presentations over the years. I'm a firm believer in creating a reaction bite as bass generally only eat for two hours a day. Being that they don't have hands, they are forced to use their mouths to react. This is often why studded anglers like KVD are so successful, they use crankbaits to force feed unwilling bass. Imagine you are standing next to me but not paying any attention to what I was doing and all of a sudden I call your name and toss you something undesirable and unexpectedly. Even though you have zero interest in holding whatever it is I'm throwing at you, I took you by surprise so your instinct is to put your hands out in an attempt to catch or stop the object from hitting you. In a basses world, bass don't have hands, so instead they are forced to use their mouths to react, couple in the fact that they are highly territorial and you can seemingly catch bass all day that have no interest in eating your bait, you're simply forcing them to react.
I've used a Biovex Deep Runner Crankbait to do this for years as its erratic swimming action and its ability to grind through the gnarliest of structures makes it an awesome way to power fish and catch both active and inactive bass. Although this is a hardcore power fishing way to catch them sometimes a bit more stealth is required or perhaps the cover is so heavy that a crankbait is simply not an option. When this is the case, there's no better choice than the Outkast Touch Down Jig but there's little things you can do to make this presentation better produce.
