Jig colors? Do you really care?

Lately, I have developed an idea about colours, shape and size of the jigs that is pretty close to the one a Neanderthal could have thought of. Yet, again and again, there are examples that keep me thinking that maybe, we should stop for a second and weight our established theories. Should we eventually put in rewind and get rid of some truths that maybe, are not so truthful?

During my latest trip to the Tropics, the Andamans to be precise, everybody spent a lot of time jigging. Different places, different species, depths and tides. Every one worked with his favourite jig, included myself, and I picked a few. The reason for every lure I choose was different, yet most of them were simple, rusted, or paintless pieces of lead with zero appeal whatsoever. My main goal was to test, once again, what would make the difference and what would not.

I thought about my crappy jigs as soulless particles of metal, puppets maybe, and that I was their Mangiafuoco, the puppeteer. Without me, they had no chance to come back to life and draw the attention of any kind of predator. I worked hard for the money, fishing was quite good on day one to three but after that the tide changed and the action slowed down big time. So it was the moment to show all the tricks and turn a dead situation into some lively action.

Well, it was a tough deal, those animals don’t like very much any kind of slow retrieve (apart from GTs), and hence keeping a faster pace kind of tired me down. Thus, my crippled jigs, with no eyes, no paint and no sex appeal made some serious damage, even when the other guys, with good looking stuff would see no action.

I sell lures, have an internet shop and stock many different kind of lures with several different colours. None of them catch MORE fish, not a single one is miraculous yet there’s a jig that will catch more fish that any other: is the one that we will drop most of the time and that suits our style better.

One of the best fishing painters of this planet

Well, this is at least my humble opinion. I believe that my friend Setsuo Hamanaka is a hell of a good painter and I LOVE his stuff. Not only he draws beautifully, but he also paints fish that are not easy to find elsewhere and that any lover of Popping and Jigging game chase the most.

GTs are one of his favourite subject. One of his original oil on canvas paint is hanging on the wall of my house entrance hall, and it welcomes me every time I step in. Is a priceless treasure I truly care for.

Setsuo, is also a good fisherman and he helped me few times getting in contact with some of the most influential Japanese fishermen, from whom I have learnt a lot. Last time we met was in Panama, with Kitamura-san, for a sort of a jigging symposium.

Please, do yourself a favour and visit his web page and galleries: you will see his great gallery with fish, landscapes, seascapes and animals. He sells his prints worldwide and if you love game fish as I do, you might want one of those hanging from the wall too.

http://s-ham.com/index-english.html