DIY Bass Jigs

[alooney11]

Ive been making bass jigs for a while and I though I would post up about my experience with the the jig pouring and tying process.

Heres the lead pot I use.  I usually run the pot as hot as it can go to get nice full casts in the molds.  I use an old frying pan to catch drippings.  I got a bunch of lead from a guy who makes stained glass windows.  They use this really nice soft lead for in between the glass panels, it melts really nice.



To ensure good pours I place the molds on the top of the lead pot and get it nice and hot.  The hotter the mold the better the lead will flow.  Let the lead and mold heat up for a good 45 minutes.



Get yourself a coupld molds.  I have a weedless arky, weedless round ball 90degree, and weedles round ball 60degree.  You may have to modify the mold slightly to get different hooks to fit.  On the arky mold I drilled out the spot where the hook eye fits so I can use flat eye hooks.  I ordered all weedless molds, if you want to pour jig with no weedguards put the fiber guard in the mold but not all the way into the jig cavity, just enough so it stops the molten lead from coming out of the hole where the gaurd is supposed to go. 



A poured jig with sprue.  I remove the sprues with a pair of wire cutters and throw them back into the pot.  For weedless jigs push the weedgaurd as far as it will go into the mold and let the molten lead surround it and the hook to secure it in place. 



Lots of jigs ready to be tied.



This is my custom jig tying vice.  I usually tie my jigs with 30lb or 40lb braid and the fly vise didnt have enough holding power.  Its a piece of angle iron with a c-clamp on the bottom and a vise-grip on top.  Lets me get real tight knots on my living rubber jigs.



I'll post some hair jig and living rubber jig tutorials if anyone is interested.

[Fish4FunJim]

Awesome tutorial Ryan...It's something I've been thinking about getting into for a couple years now....not really tying jigs but just pouring jig heads for tubes...1/8-1/4 jigs with decent hooks are a near a buck a piece...I'd love to see some more of the stuff you do.

[alooney11]

Premium hooks will cost you 35 cents a pop, so you can have premium jig heads on the cheap.  I poured some insider tube heads today.  I use this mold style with no weedgaurd:



This will slide into a jig head and double as a regular style ball jig that you can thread plastics onto or make a skirted jig, much more versatile than the tube jig.  Although you will need the tube jig mold if you want to go heavier than 1/4oz.  Jigs bigger than a quarter oz start to stretch the tube out pretty bad in the front.  Although I heard smallmouth anglers on the great lakes used to put bigger heads into their tubes to give them a more "goby-like" appearance.

[alooney11]

Couple hair jigs for cold/clear water.  3 are brown craft hair and the other one is crosscut brown rabbit with an olive rabbit zonker.