Bob Popovics, Jiggy

Looking to get a little more action in your flies? Adding a bit of weight in the right spot may be the best approach to take. Correct placement of weight on the shank can do wonders towards making a ho-hum pattern into a definite winner. The operative phrase here is "correct placement…". Weight gives better results when it's focused. Whether it's just behind the hook eye or at the bend, the weight will help shift or tilt the fly position to better enhance action. Case in point: the "Clouser Minnow" sports Dumbell lead eyes within the front third of the shank, Dan Blanton uses lead wire and bead chain in the same hook area for his "Whistler Series". John Cave makes the point for rear weight to control hook attitude and wobble in his "Spoon" fly. These examples all illustrate that it's not applying weight but where to place it that's important!
In case of the "Clouser", the strategically placed eyes cause a dipping action upon a pause in the retrieve. The eyes cause the fly to dip it's nose downward when paused, then straight on the strip only to dip once again and so on. In contrast, if you apply lead wire evenly along entire hook shank, you'll only get a heavy fly.

John Cave's "Spoon" fly uses weight at the bend of the hook to control the hook ride, and the side to side motion of the "Spoon". To achieve this, the weight must be focused to one particular spot!
Two other important points are to be made here about the use of weight in flies; one, too often weight is used primarily to get the fly down when that consideration should belong to the choice of fly line and a leader system. By making the proper line choices, adding a lightly weighted fly with proper sinking design will make for a much more practical solution. Two, weight is thought to turn the hook over, but in fact, it's the wing placement that achieves that.

The Jiggy follows these principles to the letter. It incorporates all that has beained so far. Using focused weight, a steering wing, plus simple and durable design, making the Jiggy a top performer.

Also see, Tying the Jiggy, Instructional video - approx size 8MB. Video will open in a popup window, if you have a popup blocker be sure to allow this window.