Make your 1/16 oz jig head weedless

[Moose1am]

I read some time ago about how to make the jigs weedless. All you do is take a 1/32 inch drill bit in a dremel tool with the long flexible dremel extension attached. Drill a 1/32" size hole into the top of the lead head jig so that you can insert the fishing line into the hole. You feel like a dentist doing this job! LOL Take the dremel vise or any other vice and put the lead head jig in the vice and clamp it snug. Then drill a small hole in the top of the jig head behind where you tie your fishing line to the jig head. Then cut off about a 1" long piece of 40 #test Trilene fishing line and insert the short piece of fishing line into the hole that you drilled. Then take a drop of super glue and glue the end of the line inside the hole in the lead head jig. The fishing line should stick out of back and top of the lead head jig and out in front of the hook. Cut the line so that it just goes past the bars of the hook. Now if you bump up against a tree limb in the brush pile it will keep the hook point from catching on the tree limbs so often. Once in a while you may get snagged but I was able to pull the hooks free using 6# test Trilene Iron Silk fishing line on my poles with these weedless jig head. I got the 1/16oz jig heads at walmart last month.

Today I took these newly made weedless jigs out for a trial. I caught 9 crappie in under two hours and only lost one jig the entire 2 hours that I was fishing.

I tied the jig onto the line with a palmar knot and then left a long tag line and then added a 1/4oz Bass Pro Shop Finess lead drop shop weight to the end of the tag line. The bass pro shop finess drop shot weights have a thin wire loop attached to the top of the weight which lets you pass the fishing line though the loop and then snug the line up into the loop where the wires come together. That makes it easy to attach a new weight to the line without even using a knot. I used my 7.5ft Richard Williams Graphite Crappie rod today and it worked great. I added the daiwa open faced ultra light spinning reel to complete the fishing outfit. The daiwa reel has a tefflon drag system that is smooth and allows me to catch some nice big fish on this untra light outfit.

Add a Bass Pro Shop Squirmin Squirt tube jig body to the jigs (White Lightning #18) and then put a chartruse crappie nibble on the hook. Now fish at 10ft and troll ever so slowly to keep the bait moving. I use the #1 setting intermitentely on my Min-Kota Trolling Motor when there is little or no wind. This keep the jig moving slowly which is the key to enticing the crappie to bite when they are suspended over deep water.

I caught the crappie all around structure along a drop off where it went from 8ft down to 25ft. There is some old trees or old mining equipement in the spot where I caught all the crappie. The lake I fish is Otter Pit which is just East of Evansville, IN. This is a new State Fish and Wildlife Recreational Area. There will soon be a camp ground on Boonville New Harmony Road which runs though the Blue Grass Fish and Wildlife Area. This F&W area is just East of Interstate 164 bypass on the East side of Evanville, IN. It's North of Morgan Ave. There are several large pits that were left after the stripped mined the coal in this area. Amax coal company reclaimed the land and sold some of it to the state of Indiana DNR. There are several concrete boat ramps. Trolling motors only. But you can put a ranger bass boat in the lake or one of those small one man bass boats. I have even seen canoes in the pits.

One other gentleman launched at the same time that I did and he reported catching two nice largemouth bass which he returned. I returned all 9 White Crappie to the water at the boat ramp on Otter Pit. These fish are about 2 years old and were only 8.5" long. Too small to keep but fun to catch. In two more years when the are 4 years old they may reach 10 to 12" and then would be good to keep and eat. These pits are hydrologically connected to blue grass creek and to Pigeon Creek which runs into the Ohio River. But they are only connected during periods of extreme flooding. There are some ruff fish from the river in these pits I am told. It's too bad because if the area were not connected to the river during periods of floods the state could manage the pits better. There pits receive a lot of fishing pressure but it's nice as they are only 10 minutes from my house. I can hook the boat up and be fishing in just under 30 minutes.

[LBM]

Hey Moose if you can would you post some close up pictures of the finished result with a couple of different view angles.

Thanks
LM

[Moose1am]

I don't have a digital camera and my good SLR Pentax is broken right now. I wish I had the spent the 1000 bucks on a new Digital Pentax instead of the old SLR Pentax LX camera body. My camera body's mirror has some foam that is stuck on the end of the mirror. That foam stuff is suppose to be there to cusion the mirror against the inside of the camera body when the mirror is raised up to take a picture. Somehow the foam came off the camera body and stuck on my mirror. I need to replace that foam and have the old foam cleaned up. Until then the only camera that I have is my old Pentax ME camera body. I would love to have one of the profession Pentax Digital Camera Bodies that would accept all the K Mount lenses that I have. I have lots of filters that I could use to do macro photography.

I may ask my next door neighbor to help me take some photos of my jigs for you. Then if I can figure out how to get them into my computer and posted on the crappie.com web site it would be great. But there is a lot of work to do so it may be a while before I get around to doing it.

That was why I tried my best to describe how I did the job with words. But you are right a picture from several angles would be best.

I have had my next door neighbors scanner for months now and still have not finished copying some Topo Maps of Patoka Lake. That project is going so slow that it's about to grow some moss on it. I need to get hot on that project and get it done. I have 29 pages to do. Each scan takes 4 or 5 minutes when my computer does not lock up. Each page takes four passes on the scanner to get the entire page copied. So I have to make around 120 total scans to get this job done. I gave my tiller to my neighbor so he knows that I will get the scanner back to him. LOL. I have to get the maps back to a friend when I am done with this job. He probably thinks that I was never going to return them. I really need to reformat my hard drive reinstall my Operating system to make my computer stop locking up so much. But my Dell support is expired and I am not sure how to actually do the debug on my system and get it going again. I did that a couple times over the last four years but it's been a while since I last did it and when I did it the last time I did it with help over the phone from the Dell Tech support guys. I am lost without that support. Heck I would pay them 100 bucks to get support for a few more years. That is well worth the money if you work with your computer like I do.

Let me see what I can do and see if my neighbor is willing to help me take the pictures. I know he is not home right now because I saw him going to work a few minutes ago.

Hey Moose if you can would you post some close up pictures of the finished result with a couple of different view angles.

Thanks
LM

[Cane Pole]

Moose....

I want pictures too....I can help with your pc, but i ain't Dell....If your pc locks up while scanning, there is probably not enough memory, not enough processor speed, or too much stuff running in the background...just guessing though...

Happy Crappie Days

Cane Pole

[labill]

Moose......I don't want to come across as a "computer guru", because I'm not! But when I start getting lock ups or errors, I use the [system restore] function, which is found on all but the most ancient PC's. The goal is to restore your PC to a date before your glitches started. If your PC is laboring under an overload situation, you may have to clean all the nonessential files and folders from your PC, using [disk cleanup] found in your [system tools]. I use all the tools at my disposal as regular maintenance on my Dell 4600, and it really pays in reliability. Another tool that is capable of finding and repairing errors is the [scan disk] function, also in [system tools]. One of the most important tools to maintain efficiency is the [defragment] function also found in [system tools]. It restores fragmented files that get scattered in your hard drive, and should be used regularly, and will really increase your PC's efficiency and speed if used regularly. (once a week with light PC use, two or three with heavy use) I'm on the 'puter a minimum of 5 or 6 hrs. every day, except of course, when I get a chance to go perchjerkin'. Thanks to technology, the newer PC's require less maintenance even under heavy use.

I hope this is of some use to you. If you are already familiar with all the maintenance options on your PC, and have been using them, Dell will probably be your best shot. If they want to be paid for their services, try an earlier date to [system restore] before spending your money! All these tools are easy to use, and are on your start page.

[Roberta]

...while you're throwing those lead filings into the air.

I take it you end up with something along the lines of Crappiepappy's old favorite? - Roberta

[Moose1am]

Yea I have to be careful where those lead filing land. I don't want to get lead poisoning. LOL. Once I spilled some mercury out of a mercury Blood Pressure device that my X wife (the Nurse) brought home from the hospital. I had to get sulfur dust to clean up all the little bits of mercury off the kitchen floor. We learned how to clean up mercury spills in High School Biology Class and College Chemisty Classes thank god. I read some warning on the plastic mini blinds talking about lead leaching out onto the dust that gathers on the mini blinds. Now some of the new mini blinds (Plastic and metal one) are lead free or suppose to be lead free. While I don't wear my respirator when I do the drilling I have one somewhere in the house that uses those PURPLE HEPA filters that are good for Asbestos and Lead Dust. It helps to work in the Environmental Clean up and testing field. LOL


As to this old comptuer. I really need to update it. I got it from dell back in 1995 or 1996 and it's way past it's prime. It was a 550MHz CPU system with a 100 MHz bus and it's a dog. I slaped in a new Intel 1 Gig CPU a few years back and have two 256MB Ram cards for a total of 512MB of ram memory. I use a 64MB Video card from Asus with a Geforce 3 video chip. It worked for some of the flight sims that I used to play up until they started updating the sims to require those new 3 gig CPUs, 800 MHZ BUSES AND ATI 900 video cards to be competative.

I do a regular scan disk evertime I get a lock up. LOL I defragged about a week ago. I had a blue screen of death about two months ago and could not even get the computer to boot up right. I had to reinstall the Windows 98SE operating system over the top of my old install. That got the computer back up and running without me having to do the debug (which reformats the hard drive and or Fdisk and setting up a partician. It's the formating the hard drive that I have not done and that is what I worry about. I have been running Nortons defrag ever since I got my first IBM compatable system back in 1989/90.

But for those who are not familar with the Nortons and now the Windows defrag it's good to know about it. I have my computer setup to run scandisk automatically if my sytem shuts down before I can close windows properly.

I also check for lost temp files all the time. One time I found over 300 tmp files on my neighbors computer. Those will really slow your system down. Just do a search for *.tmp on the C:\ drive and delete all the files that the *.tmp search finds.

I do appreciate all the help that everyone has given.

And yes I think that these jigs may look like the Oldham Weedless Crappie jigs when I got done with them.

I am working on the proper angle to drill the hole for the 40 pound 1.5" long fishing line that is glued into the top back part of the jig head.

I just stick the head of the minnow head lead jig into the top and the edge of the vice. The hook is pointed up and towards me when I drill the hole. In fact I brace my fingers along the side of the hook when I am trying to get the hole started. I could use a small file and file the top of the jig head flat so that I could get a better start on making the hole. I only drill into the jig head about 1/4" of an inch before I hit something solid like the steel used for the part of the jig where you tie the fishing line too. The hook and the eyelet are molded into the lead. So you have to be careful when drilling into the lead that you don't hit the stell and break the tiny drill bit. A 1/32" drill bit is very small an only about an inch or 1.5" long. I sink most of the dril bit into the dremal tool and I use the smallest bit holder in the dremel kit. I have broken a few of those small drill bits in the past. The thing that make the job much easier is the long flex tool that you get with the professional dremel kit. It's a flex kit that is about 2 ft long one one of the drill extenstion connects to the dremel tool while the other end has another bit holder where you put the drill bits. I use the flex tool for drilling and or polishing stuff.
I guess you could use the dremel drill press thing and then hold the jig with a pair of channel locks or something but I found that putting the jig head into a vice is best.

Remember you want the heavy fishing line to protect the open part of the jigs hook. So the fishing line goes out of the jig head and up toward the front of the open part of the hook.

I am going to try to draw a picture using Paint Shop Pro 8 and see if I can post it. LOL don't laught as I am not an artist

...while you're throwing those lead filings into the air.

I take it you end up with something along the lines of Crappiepappy's old favorite? - Roberta

[Moose1am]

Well this is a long shot. I took one of the jigs and stuck it on my scanner and did a scan. It turned out pretty nice. Now if I can just figure out how to get the picture off my hard drive an onto this forum

[Shellback]

Hey, that came out pretty good on (who's) scanner? Ha! Maybe the neighbor has a new tiller motor!

[Cane Pole]

Good pic...When does mass production start? By the way, I ain't no computer guru either. I teach electronics and am "exposed" to these beasts daily.