How to Fish a Swim Jig: A Complete Guide

Bass fishing has seen a lot of big changes in recent years, from new baits, to crazy electronic advancements. These changes have led to some of the old reliable baits our fathers and grandfathers loved to use falling to the wayside. The swim jig is one of these baits.

With the advent of the chatterbait, the swim jig rapidly fell off of the radar, collecting dust in garages and tackle boxes. But it never truly became any less effective. As bladed jigs scorched through grass flats in search of a hot bite, bass became increasingly aware that the thumping of a chatterbait didn’t always mean a quick meal, it meant danger. Yet, even now, the vast majority of bass anglers will instinctively reach for the chatterbait when fishing grass.

For anglers who know how to fish a swim jig, that’s a really good thing. Let the pressure of the chatterbait work in your favor this season, and reap the rewards of more aggressive strikes from bass who haven’t seen a swim jig in ages.

The Swim Jig

A swim jig isn’t some special or crazy invention, in fact, I believe its simplicity is what makes it so effective. Jigs have been catching bass for decades as they can represent any number of prey species that smallmouth and largemouth bass love to eat. From crawfish to bluegills and other baitfish, a jig is one of the most versatile bass lures we have at our disposal. A swim jig is just a jig that you swim, rather than hop or drag along the bottom.

Traditionally, a swim jig is a lead or tungsten head adorned with a rubber skirt, a trailer, and a large hook. Some people like to remove the skirt to mix up the presentation a bit, but that’s much less common than the traditional skirted swim jig.

The trailer can quite literally be any soft plastic you desire: paddletails, flukes, crawfish, beaver-style baits, and even curly-tail grubs. 

How to Rig a Swim Jig

A swim jig should take no more than 10 seconds to be ready to fish. You’ll simply need to remove your swim jig of choice from its packaging and rig your soft plastic trailer on. If you don’t want to deal with the soft plastic sliding down throughout the day of fishing, you can use super glue to ensure it stays in place on the jig head.

Step 1: Select your swim jig. You’ll want to try to match the baitfish or crawfish the bass are keyed in on for the most success. But when in doubt, a shad color or even green pumpkin is never a bad choice.

Step 2: Select your trailer. Depending on if you’re trying to match baitfish or crawfish, your trailer selection should follow the same line of thinking and the color patterns should be matching or at least in the same ballpark.

Step 3: Thread your soft plastic onto the jig. A helpful tip is to put super glue between the soft plastic and jig head to prevent the bait from sliding down.

Step 4: Use a Palomar knot to tie your line to the jig head.

What Makes the Swim Jig so Effective?

A swim jig is incredibly versatile, and with most bass lures, versatility directly correlates with effectiveness. Typically, swim jigs are fished over large grass flats where bass will stage during the pre-spawn and post-spawn feeding on anything and everything that tries to call these grass flats home. But, you can also fish them over shallow wood, skip them under docks, and even fish them for suspended fish in deep water.

While you can fish them a million different ways, my favorite and most effective way is targeting shallow grass. Since the majority of anglers today reach for the chatterbait in shallow grass situations, on heavily pressured bodies of water, most bass that call grass flats home have seen hundreds if not thousands of chatterbaits ripping by.

Now, when that metallic blade comes thumping through the water column, they know to stay put. But since a swim jig doesn’t thump, they’re much less aware of the dangers it presents. Its subtle swimming action mimics that of a baitfish or fleeing crawfish beautifully, triggering even the most pressured grass dwelling bass into striking.

The key difference between the swim jig and the chatterbait is obviously the blade, but what may go unnoticed is the effect the blade has on the bass’s lateral line. Their lateral line works in conjunction with the inner ears to decipher the direction and meaning of sounds. In essence, it allows the fish to feel exactly where a bait is coming from as it approaches. But, over time, they become much more wary if they get conditioned to a certain feeling (or sound).

The swim jig will have an effect on their lateral line, but it will vastly differ in feeling to that of a bladed jig. So they’ll still be able to and want to hone in on your lure and ambush it as it swims by.

For more tips on how to fish a swim jig, check out this great video from my friend Tyler Anderson.

When to Throw a Swim Jig

There’s no mistaking that throwing a swim jig is a power fishing technique. This means you can, but probably shouldn’t, fish a swim jig year-round. In the cold winter months, the bass will likely be too lethargic to want to chase down a swim jig, and in the dog days of summer, they’ll be equally as lethargic, trying to conserve energy and ride out the heat wave. That leaves you with spring and fall to catch bass on a swim jig effectively.

For me, the fall is a lot more fun with swimbaits, topwater, and jerkbaits, so I primarily fish swim jigs in the spring as the grass flats begin to grow and fill in. The weeks leading up to the spawn as bass push into the grass is one of my favorite times to throw one. Prior to the spawn, bass will find holes in the grass to call home and even potentially make their beds in, this leaves them in a vulnerable position if you’re able to identify these areas and swim your jig right through them. 

The same can be said for the post-spawn, when the bass are guarding their fry and very defensive whenever anything enters their hole in the grass. If you’re able to see color changes or spots where it doesn’t look like the grass is growing, those are prime locations to throw a swim jig during the pre- or post-spawn. Since you’ll typically be getting bites in and around thick grass, the gear you choose to fish your swim jig with plays an important role in the technique as a whole.

The Gear You Need to Rig and Fish a Swim Jig

Picking the Right Rod

When throwing a swim jig, you’re going to want a decently long rod that has a stiff backbone but a fast tip. As you swim the jig, you’ll be lightly pulsing it with the rod tip to give it the swimming action, and the tip has to be able to do that gently to not induce too much erratic behavior. My favorite swim jig rod is the Abu Garcia Bobby Lane Swim Jig Rod. At 7 feet 3 inches, it allows me to make long and accurate casts, and the medium-heavy action really drives the hook home when you do get a bite. But what sets this rod apart for me is the tip. It’s technically a fast action tip, but it’s slower than, say, that of my jig rod, allowing me to really work the swim jig without imposing too much of an up-and-down action. The softer feeling but fast action tip is what makes this the perfect rod for slinging a swim jig.

Picking the Right Reel

The reel you choose is equally as important as the rod. If you opt for a reel with too high of a gear ratio, it’ll be hard to control the speed of your retrieve. On the same hand, if you go with too low of a gear ratio, you’ll struggle to keep the swim jig above the grass. I tend to reach for a 7.5:1 reel with some hefty drag that allows me to horse the bass out of the grass after the hookset. No matter how hard you set the hook, if you give the bass time to bury in the grass, they always seem to find a way to get off. My go-to reel for a swim jig is the Lew’s BB1 Pro Speed Spool Baitcast Reel. It’s the perfect combination of speed and drag power, and it’s helped me catch hundreds of bass on a swim jig.

The Best Swim Jig

As with most bass lures, there are more options than you can fathom when you walk down the swim jig aisle at your local tackle store. And honestly, 99 percent of those options will work. Since this isn’t a hard-bodied jerkbait with intricate weights and details to help it stand out in a crowd, there’s no need to over-complicate selecting a swim jig. Simply select the weight you’re looking for. Something like a ⅜-ounce will work just fine, and the color pattern you want to use. I tend to gravitate toward the Dirty Jigs Swim Jig because it has a great hook, the skirt material holds up well, and they have plenty of color options to choose from.

Swim Jig Trailers

In my experience, selecting the best swim trailer solely relies on what the bass are feeding on. In tidal fisheries like the Potomac River, throwing a crawfish style trailer works well since the bass in those grass flats love to feed on crawfish and small crab species alike. But on bodies of water with muddier bottoms and grass flats, the bass might not see as many crawfish, so sticking with a paddletail to resemble bluegill or shad is likely your best bet.

When selecting a crawfish-style bait, I tend to reach for a Strike King Rage Tail Menace. Its sleek profile pairs perfectly with the swim jig, and the flapping craws offer a lot of action in the water. As for the paddletail, my go-to has always been a Keitech FAT Swing Impact 3.3-inch swimbait. These paddletails offer an amazing, natural swimming action, and the salt content helps keep the bait in line when swimming it back to the boat. They also hold up well throughout a day of fishing.

Line

When it comes time to spool up your free rigging baitcasting reel, look no further than 14-pound Sunline Super FC Sniper Fluorocarbon Line. The fluorocarbon line will be the best option for your swim jig because the sinking line will allow you to keep the swim jig lower in the water column, and it’s abrasion resistant to help you cut through the grass better than a monofilament would. If you’re fishing in incredibly thick grass patches, a braided line is another solid choice, but the water color needs to be dingy or tannic to maximize your success with braid.

Final Thoughts and Tips on How to Fish a Swim Jig

While the swim jig seems to have been replaced by the chatterbait, it’s still an incredibly effective tool for shallow water fishing during the pre-spawn and post-spawn. If you love fishing a chatterbait, but find you aren’t getting bites like you’d expected, try switching it up and falling back on the old reliable swim jig. I think you’ll like the results.

A final tip with the swim jig is to always trim your weed guard. Some swim jigs come from the factory with an oversized weed guard that can cause the swim jig to move awkwardly through the water, reduce your hook up ratio, and snag more grass than intended. By simply trimming the weed guard to be in line with the tip of the hook, you’ll be much better off. 

Remember to vary your retrieval speed and change up your trailers until you find success. Sometimes, even the most subtle change of color or jig weight can make all the difference when throwing a swim jig.