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Lead Heads/Jig Heads LEADHEADS, JIG HEADS, SOFT PLASTICS AND REAL STUFF Known by many names the lead head, bucktail, jig head anything you want to call it is a hunk of lead molded to a hook and then painted and or deer tail tied on to it. It is the only weight you will need. On its hook you attach a plastic worm, grub-head, twister tails, fin-s fish and countless other manufactured products along with sheddar crab, grass shrimp, sand worms, and squid strips(salted and soaked in sheddar oil) to attract you, but especially the weakfish. The weakfish is a school fish, meaning they will travel in groups. If you find one you will have found a bunch (school). That's the problem, finding them. The best way is to first start with a local chart and knowing that the weakfish like a sand bottom 4 to 6 feet deep, like the area around inter coastal bouy # 42 off of main land Barnegat and Tices Shoals off Waretown and the power plant. Even on these flat areas there are holes or gullies that will hold fish and most of all the grass on these flats hold grass shrimp, a favoriate food for weakfish. If you determine the direction that you will drift by observing the tide flow and wind speed, lay your offerings over the side and pay out line maybe thirty feet to start. At this point a lot of factors enter into the picture. First - one is weight of the jig head Second - diameter of line Third - speed of drift. The best situation is when you dip your rod tip down, you feel the bottom, return to normal position and you should be gliding off the bottom, above the grass. If nothing happens don't repeat the same drift but move over and try again. Have close at hand some sort of marker to put over to mark a fish or hit, so you can repeat that drift. On these drifts you should have a variety of attractions, a piece of sheddar crab, strips of squid (salted and soaked in sheddar oil), sand worms or the soft plastic lures that can be put on a small 3/8 or 1/4 ounce bucktail. When you are drifting slow or at anchor over a hole or gully you have no idea at what depth the fish are at so here again you have to find them. To do this make your longest cast. As the lure hits the water start your slow steady retrieve. Your lure will travel from the surface to its deepest point half way back and to the surface again back to your boat. If you get fish half-way back they are deep and shallow if at start or finish of your retrieve so on your next cast let your jig sink some before you start and that will give you more time in the deep. When you try to decide what weight jig head to use at any condition you have to refer back to the three points mentioned before. As far as color goes this can vary according to brightness of day and color of the water. Keep changing combinations while still and a variety while drifting. As you can well imagine there are a lot of methods that can be used in addition to chumming with grass shrimp or a chum pot filled with clam chum, which works for a lot of folks. This artificial lure fish'n is good if your time is limited but best for finding your own fish, away from the crowds. So study your charts and start looking and keep those markers handy in case you run over some bottom structure you want to find again. As far as tackle goes, stay light. For ease of casting light baits and using 6 pound or 8 pound test line makes it easy. Never set hooks because that's how weakfish got their name. The mouth bones are not connected and tear outs are real easy. Use a net to land-em. Stay away from those that are shrimp-chumming you will not catch the fish they are. Move off and find your own and maybe with luck others will give you the same consideration and not crowd you out. Every two weeks or moon phase we get a new influx of fish. Weakfish will spawn any time between June and October, so different families arrive at different times to make little weakfish. This explains the changes in size of fish through out the summer. So to sum it all up the only way to do it wrong, is to not put your hook in the water. | ||||||||
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WHAT, WHERE, WHEN, AND HOW? 
