canal jigging with spinning setup

[Mike P]

In most of the places I jig, the right weight jig and casting to the right upcurrent angle results in bottom contact through most of your drift.

You will find that you rarely get hits before your jig gets perpendicular to yourself, and rarely get them after it passes beyond either 10 o'clock or 2 o'clock depending on the direction of the tide. Occasionally you will pick up a fish at the very end of the drift.

Jim uses heavy jigs, and casts just ahead of the area he wants to work. He'll count to 15 or so, and stop the line with his finger, then drop back as needed. Lots of times he will cast downcurrent, in order to work a specific stretch of water--and dropping back line is usually necessary when you throw downcurrent.

I rarely have to throw more than 4 oz to keep in contact with the bottom. Most tides, I fish 3 oz all tide, and on some of the very slow half moon tides, I have fished most of a tide with 2 oz. In many places I can throw short and get better results than trying to reach the middle. 2 oz will hang less if you want to just throw short and work the edge of the drop-off.

If you feel your jig losing contact just after it pases directly in front of you, that's usually a hole out there. There, you might want to drop back so you get deeper into the hole--but, one thing you will notice--many times the fish are sitting right under the uptide lip of the hole, waiting for something to drop in, or pass over it, and you will feel the bump almost the instant you lose bottom contact. Fish won't come up very far off the bottom to chase a jig, but they will come up a foot or two. It's not always true that your jig has to be right on the bottom to produce.

Fish rarely sit on even bottom and stem the tide with their tails. Like trout, they will use bottom structure that creates a current break. Or they will cruise open bottom--sitting in one place and stemming the tide wastes energy. They'll duck behind a rock, or down under the lip of a hole, and use the current break to save energy and as an ambush point.