TRY THE JIKA RIG
Discover the great set-up that combines the best of dropshot and a stand-up jighead
E very year I am surprised at what is actually swimming and feeding in my local harbours. With new techniques and lures being developed, the ability to catch them all on LRF tackle is a mouth-watering prospect.
I look forward to April because winter is over and it’s time to play with the influx of spring species. Top of my list is the return of flounders to the harbours, and bigger pollack to the inshore reefs and rock marks.
The majority of my April fishing is primarily for flatties around harbours, but there are many other species that start to come into to this rich, feeding environment. From the bigger fish, such as flounders, pollack, bass and cod, to the mini-species, such as scorpion fish, blennies, gobies and the smaller wrasse, they all start to recolonise the harbours after the rigours of winter.
Don’t be fooled that harbours will only contain small fish because I’ve lost count of the amount of specimens I have caught from harbour marks, as well as a number of oddities.
Unless I see fish actively up in the water column, most of my spring tactics focus around the seabed. I use lure techniques that allow me to fish this area of the water column, and my go-to rig is a dropshot; I get a lot of success with it, especially for flounders.
There are many times, however, especially when the water is clear and shallow, that flounders and other species do not feel comfortable coming a foot or two off the bottom to take a lure. It can be very frustrating, especially when you are sight fishing.
Not wanting to blow their cover and expose themselves to predators, the target fish sit tight and resolutely ignore your lure. On these occasions, a jighead rig twitched hard along the seabed can get results. When the fish are acting in this spooky way, rather than change rigs, I slide the dropshot weight up the line so that it rests against the hook; it’s a little crude, but it works. Japanese anglers have refined this concept to produce a rig that combines the benefits of dropshot and a stand-up jighead. It’s called the Jika rig. SINK VERTICALLY A great thing about the Jika rig is that you can get it to sink straight down or swim. When you pause your retrieve, the lure will sink vertically. If you allow the rig to reach the bottom, the soft lure will be nose down and tail up, and if
you continue this, by hopping the lure back, it produces a brilliant action.
The majority of my flounder fishing is done by sight, and, armed with polarised sunglasses, I have witnessed crabs and flounders compete with each other to grab a lure. I have also seen bigger flounders snatch a crab that was holding on to an Isome worm.
April into May sees the crabs start to peel, and the fish really get switched on to eating them. As a result, it is worth trying creaturetype baits because there are not many species that won’t have a go at a well-presented creature lure. These work well on a Jika rig because the way the weight folds under the lure as you retrieve is similar to a shrimp or cray using its tail. The action of this rig causes the lure to pop up when the lure hits the seabed.
When using shrimp or crab imitations, this action can imitate their defensive posture of waving their claws. The crab's threat is usually answered by the fish attacking the crab, either to drive it so that the fish can feed without competition, or, in the case of larger fish, to eat the crustacean.
Another brilliant tip for getting your creature bait’s claws to pop up in this defensive posture involves using cocktail sticks. This tip was given to me by Danny Parkins, who uses this trick to target big ballan wrasse. Simply insert a cocktail stick into the claw of your creature bait and trim it off. This gives the claw buoyancy and makes it float. Your lure will sit on the seabed, but the claws will be raised in that defensive posture. It also works in the tails of stick baits, such as the senko and sluggo.
Paddletails or fish imitations work well on a Jika rig, which really gets the lure to act with a nose-down tail-up presentation as the weight hits the seabed. The weight throws up small puffs of sand or silt, and it looks very much like a baitfish feeding on the seabed. This is a real trigger for predatory fish, and they are quick to hit a seemingly distracted feeding baitfish.