I tend to keep a casting jig or two in my lure boxes, sometimes they get me fish when nothing else does, best way to rig them?

It’s one of those lures which I don’t turn to a lot of the time, but there have been enough times when a casting jig has caught me bass when nothing else will. I can recall numerous occasions when birds suddenly show a bunch of bait that’s been driven to the surface by bass, and when that activity is at range, it’s been enough times that only a casting jig can reach them. Hence me always keeping at least one of them in one of the generally two washable lure boxes I carry with me………….

A bass caught a long way out on the 40g Savage Gear 3D Jig Minnow - it flies!!

And through my work with Savage Gear I got easy access to their 3D Jig Minnow, and I really like it, albeit I think there’s a bit of a problem. There’s a 20g and a 40g version, but there’s no 30g model. I have had plenty of bass on the 40g Savage Gear 3D Jig Minnow, but if you are carrying a lure rod rated to say 30g or 35g then you are going to be potentially overloading it by blasting a 40g metal out there at full power. I don’t tend to turn to the 20g version very much because if I clip on a casting jig it’s mostly a case of me needing to hit a specific something at range - feeding birds, tide-rip, sandbank etc.

The 30g Seadra Aqua-Bullet Bait Fish casting jig

There are of course a lot of different casting jigs on the market these days, so I went looking for that 30g “gap-filler” size and stumbled across the Seadra Aqua-Bullet Bait Fish casting jig. It comes in a few different sizes and I rather like the size and profile around that 30g size especially. For sure I am often fishing with a lure rod that can easily cope with a 40g casting jig, but rod rating aside, I do like how fast you can move a 30g metal in the cast if distance is the absolute key. Heavier doesn’t always mean further, especially if you are having to push a lure rod really hard which might not be performing at its optimum level due to the ratings.

The one thing which I have always been a bit unsure about is how best to rig these casting jigs for our fishing. I guess we might look at these types of lures in slightly different ways, and as such how we fish them might well differ as well. For the most part I am going to blast them out and fish them with a fairly erratic sink and draw, and as you well know you’re going to mostly get hit on the drop if you work a casting jig like this. But I also like smaller-profile lures for some of my bass fishing, and something like the Savage Gear 3D Jig Minnow or this Seadra Aqua-Bullet Bait Fish appeal to me as a “whack and retrieve” type of metal lure, much like I might usually fish the Savage Gear Seeker. The action on the casting jig might not be as intense as the Seeker, but it’s giving me a long-distance, smaller-profile lure which can still deal with hectic conditions if need be.

The 40g Savage Gear 3D Jig Minnow

When I go looking around for casting jig type lures, I notice that most of them come rigged with that single assist hook on the top with a treble hook on the bottom. I know this setup works but it strikes me as a bit of overkill. Could I get away with just the assist at the top of the lure? My guess is that this would be fine for that sink and draw style of retrieve, but how about for whacking it out and winding it straight in? Would I be better off with a relatively big single hook on the bottom of the lure and nothing else, to potentially deal with any way you might fish lures like these? Any suggestions you might have are more than welcome, please feel very free to engage with me in the comments section below. I would be very grateful to learn more about how some of you might rig these lures for how you might be fishing with them. For the time being though I have gone and found that 30g weight casting jig which can sit in my lure box and work well with virtually any lure rod I’d be out and about with…………

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