Bullets or Smiling bills jigs
 

What does everyone prefer? I prefer bullets with a solid hook and lots of hair in all conditions. What about you?

Ball jigs with tails , smiling bills with bucktail. Ball jigs get stuck less and smiling Bills wiggle a little.

For most surf use I like the bullet style with lots of hair... except when sandeels are the primary forage - then sparsly tied so the profile is thinner. The strong hooks on your heads are excellent.

I used to be all about smilin' bill heads as somehow I got it into my mind that the "mouth" on the jig made it somehow swim. :confused: As I really thought that through and rationalized how much water resistance was actually caused by the mouth I figured it made little if any difference and put more of the success on jigs in the hands of the fisherman coupled with the amount of hair used. From there I began to experiment with different head styles and eventually settled on bullet style heads like yours and the Andrus jetty caster as I find it to be more forgiving in the rocks.

How about Upperman lima bean heads while we're at it?
Standup saltwater size heads?
Banana heads?

I switch back and forth from both, haven't really seen a difference in catching to sway me either way. But if I had to choose, it would probably be the bullet style jetty caster, for some reason I just feel like I keep better contact.
I've heard good things about your bucktails... do you have a link to check out your work, and order some if needed? Thanks.

I find myself tying on smiling bills more that any other style. Bullets (Jetty caster style) are great too and I'll use both interchangably. Ultra dense hair and a sturdy hook are a must.

Banana and minnow head (i.e. spro style) are two that I primarily tie on for fluke or sea bass. The banana is nice over snotty bottom/Oysters as they seem to pull out of the snags a bit easier that the minnow head. The minnow heads are great over sand and less grabby structure. Fluke jigs get tied sparse and short usually with a pinch of synthetic under the bucktail.

I use the Upperman/Lima bean style for blackfish jigs. But I'm really more of a traditionalist when it comes to tog rigs.

I have a bunch of SPRO bucktails, has anyone found them effective in catching bass from the shore or in an inlet from the rocks?

I enjoy the SPRO mostly from a boat on a drift cause of the head design and eye placement, makes the jig swim nice and level and can help save from some snags with that minnow type face.

I tried andrus jetty casters this year for the first time and i am in love...
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X2. Check out Blue Frog too. I've ben trying to get RT to bring them in but haven't seen them yet.

Your bullet head jigs are the BOMB. I killed Bass on them both in the Canal and on my boat.:love:

I normally get the smiling bills but they end up not smiling after about 1 hour when the smile gets wiped off their face. I agree with Toby that the amount of water displaced prob. doesn't make a difference. I did have 1 weird day last spring where I was doing well with a SB then the front got flattened and I wasn't doing as well and when I switched back to a new SB I did better. Prob. b/c of my confidence.

I'm not sure how much it matters in practice, but the drag coefficient of a smiling bill is probably in the 2-2.3 range and the drag coefficient of a bullet jig is probably in the 0.4-0.5 range. How much wiggle that translates into would depend on a bunch of stuff, but it seems plausible that it could make a difference, particularly with pork or rubber on it. I am not convinced it makes a difference as far as relative effectiveness, but there is a difference in drag coefficient. Just maybe it was more important than Paul's confidence, but we will never know.