Swim It

By Mike Iaconelli

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The two laydowns just ahead of the boat look perfect. Stretching out from a creek bank right beside a major feeding flat, staging bass must be holding in their branches. But it's a sure bet the trees have been hammered. You know at least 10 boats have been through before you, but more likely than not, those anglers fished the trees with either big, flashy spinnerbaits or noisy, rattling crankbaits.

These are baits the bass see every day. Swim a jig past those same trees, and chances are good you're going to get bit.

You may not be familiar with the technique, but swimming a jig has been critical to my success in numerous tournaments. In fact, it was the key behind my 2003 Bassmaster Classic win. The bass were suspended around cover, and they didn't want spinnerbaits or crankbaits. I know, because I tried both. They wanted something up in the water column, but it had to be a little more subtle. When I swam a jig past those fish, they just nailed it.

Get Off Bottom

The jig-swimming technique is both extremely effective and severely underrated. To most bass fishermen, a jig represents a crawfish and nothing else, so the perception has always been that jigs need be bounced on the bottom. However, this is a major misconception. When you swim them steadily along, jigs also imitate baitfish very well.

I swim jigs year-round, but the approach is most effective when bass suspend--which they do quite a bit in the fall as they move shallower and get ready to feed up for winter. They'll suspend in cover near major flats and over the tops of secondary points. These bass relate heavily to baitfish, which is the perfect fit for jig swimming.

The actual technique is very much like slow-rolling a spinnerbait. Cast beside a laydown or dock, or across a point, count the bait down to the depth you want to fish and reel back steadily, controlling the jig with gentle pumps of the rodtip. If the fish are suspended near the surface, you might count just a few seconds before you begin winding. For deeper fish, a longer pause will be needed.

I use a Mann's Stone Jig, which I designed specifically with the swimming technique in mind. Many jigs are wonderful for flipping into cover or crawling down rocky slopes, but they don't work as well for swimming. You need a jig with a planing-type head shape, which allows it to swim evenly in the water.

Colors typically should match the forage. During the fall, this often means fishing shad colors. However, you need to consider what the bass eat in the waters you are fishing. It could be shad, alewives, bluegills or something completely different. For swimming Stone Jigs in stained water, I'm admittedly partial to "Mike's Special," which has a lot of blue in it.

Trailer selection is also important. For the swimming technique, I want a trailer with a lot of kicking action, as opposed to the more neutral crawfish-type trailer I'd use for flipping. One of my favorites, which is sort of a sleeper jig trailer, is a 6-inch Mann's Dragin Lizard cut in half. The tail and legs create an awesome action when you pull the jig through the water. Double-tail grubs also work well as swimming-jig trailers.

Tackle Matters

I fish a swimming jig on a medium-heavy, 7-foot Team Daiwa LT rod, because I need a lot of tip action in a rod to work the bait properly. You also need a fast reel in order to catch up with fish and get a hookset when they hit on the run and come straight at you. Therefore, I use a Team Daiwa Z Series reel, which has a 6.3:1 gear ratio. I spool my reels with 12- to 20-pound-test Stren Magnaflex, and 17-pound is the size I use most. Magnaflex is a copolymer line and it has the right properties for jig swimming.

Ideal line size varies according to how deep you want to get your jig. During the 1999 Federation Championship, for example, I was catching fish the first day just two or three feet beneath the surface. It had been overcast, and the fish were up high. However, on the second day, the sun came out and the bass dropped deeper in the water column. They were in the same spots and still suspended, but they were a few feet deeper, and I had to use lighter line to effectively swim the jig a little deeper and catch those fish.

Of course, if I hadn't been swimming a jig it wouldn't have mattered what size line I had on my reels. I probably wouldn't have