found a way to avoid pickerel biting off my crappie jigs

Up until last weekend I was losing a dozen jigs to picks per trip fishing a local mixed species lake. I had some thin leader wire (.011) laying around and decided to rig a 2.5" leader on my 1/16 and 1/32 oz jigheads. I figured that since Beetle Spins work on crappie, why not a smaller wire leader. The thin wire didn't deter the bite of even the smallest fish of any species and many decent size crappie, perch, sunfish, bass and pickerel hit aggressively! You might think that a rigid wire attached to the line tie woudl hamper lure action - it didn't, at least not for the horizontal-travel presentation or vertical finesse action at the boat.

A few years ago I attached a thin wire leader to a small split ring and it did not work as well as the wire fixed at a 45 degree angle to the jighead hook shank. The split ring allowed too much lure wag and that is one action a grub should never have IMO.

Interesting! Are you saying that the jigs you used last weekend had the wire fixed at a 45 degree angle? How did you do that? Could you post a picture?

The picture includes a wire grub lock and fixed leader on a 1/16 oz collarless jighead with a #4 hook.

You can change the angle to any degrees you want but I doubt you would ever use it at zero or 90 degrees.

Thanks for taking the trouble to post the picture. That's kind of what I was seeing in my mind's eye.

I like the grub lock, too.

i always use a floro leader and i dot have a problem with them biting off.