Not having jigged much, I'm interested in how you approach a new bottom for jigging so as not to lose all of your hardware in the first 10 minutes?
What is less apt to hang up while bouncing off the bottom, rubber shad or bucktails?

a 1 ounce bank sinker tied direct to braid can give you a great feel for the bottom... if its sand or mud you wont feel it clank along the bottom.. if its cobble bottom, youll feel it irraticly bouncing and clanking all over the place and if its bedrock you'll loose your sinker.

No way around taking the chnace with the jig to test the bottom. You need to send one out there and feel around. You can try controlling the depth and find the bottom slowly and see if you can get a feel for it instead of just letting it sink to the bottom and possibly getting hung up.

I have bare jigs for this kind of condition. maybe you lose it but its only a bare jig costing maybe 60 cents and no work put into tying the bucktail on it.