I am back home from Toronto where I was presenting fishing seminars at The Great Outdoors Show on the weekend on behalf of Outdoor Canada Magazine.  I love doing seminars for two reasons: You get the chance to meet so many super nice people and they are a never ending source of great writing material.  

Case in point: one day on the weekend I got into a major discussion with several folks about the virtues of fishing with life-like fishing lures.  There is no question but that the trend in fishing tackle these days is toward ever more realistic looking baits.  Lures that look so anatomically correct you'd swear they're going to jump out of your hand at any minute.   

Most of these lures are drop dead gorgeous and there is no question, they catch fish.  But, that doesn't mean we should discount the lures that look like, well, nothing found in nature.  

Take hair jigs as a perfect case in point.  

"I remember interviewing "Big" Jim McLaughlin for a story I was once writing," said outdoor writer and friend Tim Allard, "and Jim telling me that bucktail jigs are one of the most under-utilized presentations. I don't think much has changed in the decade since.  Hair jigs seem to have a cult following, but the majority of anglers simply don't fish with them, or at least, not often enough."



Like Tim, I am a devoted hair jig angler having one tied on at least one rod most of the year, for just about everything that swims, from walleye and bass to perch and crappies.   Indeed, I landed my biggest winter crappie ever ... a 2 1/4 pound goliath I hauled through a hole in the ice ... on a tiny hair jig.  

 "A major advantage of hair over plastic is that hair is tied directly on to the hook," said Tim, who, by the way, recently wrote the award winning book, Ice Fishing, The Ultimate Guide which you can purchase at Amazon, Chapters, Barnes and Nobles and most other book stores. 

"A common problem fishing with soft-baits for panfish (and other fish for that matter) is that short-strikes often result in the soft-bait getting pulled down the hook (super-glue plastic trick notwithstanding), especially after a few fish have been caught on the same bait.  This "pants pulled down" syndrome robs anglers of fishing time, as you're constantly re-rigging your bait.  With a hair jig, however, this is never an issue, as there is virtually no time lost re-rigging.  Over the course of the day this equates to more casts and more fish caught, especially during brief flurries of fish activity when every second counts.  Got weeds on your hair jig, rip 'em off with a rod snap and keep casting. No so with most plastics."

 Of course, the other "positive" about hair jigs (whether they are made of bucktail, feather or marabou) is that they fish "big" but cast and eat "small".   

"Underwater a hair jig has a pretty sizeable profile and the hair strands come alive with a natural undulating action that is unobtainable with plastic," says Allard.  "On the flip side, wet hair stays extremely compact you cast, which means you can toss a hair jig into the next postal code - a major bonus when you're covering water or fishing in clear, knee-deep scenarios with skittish fish."  

 While hair jigs offer fish a sizeable profile, when they eat one there is nothing to get in the way.  The fibres shrink and the fish is hooked.  It is as simple as that.  Unlike hard and soft plastic baits, nothing impedes a fish from completely sucking in a hair jig and getting hooked well.  Indeed, a few years ago my partner and I won a fall bass tournament throwing hair jigs and while we hooked in excess of 50 smallmouth a day (we won the event with a two day, 10 fish total weighing 41-pounds) we didn't lose a single fish.  

"This past summer I had some phenomenal hair jig catches," Tim noted.  "In 45 minutes I boated a 41- and a 43-inch northern pike on a  weed flat swimming a hair jig tipped with a 5-inch paddletail swimbait trailer.  In another two-hour session on a lake I'd never fished before, my wife and I put 25 largemouth in the boat using hair jigs.  This was obviously fun, but what was even more exciting was two months earlier, when I was teaching my wife how to swim a hair jig, she stuck one of her best smallmouth ever."  

 By the way, if you're fishing for pike and/or muskies with hair jigs, or anywhere they could bite you off, I’ve found it is best to make your own thin, almost invisible leaders using the pliable 13- or 20-pound test Surflon Micro Supreme knottable stainless steel wire made by American Fishing Wire www.americanfishingwire.com .  Simply use back-to-back uni-knots to attach the leader to your main line and a Palomar or double improved clinch knot to tie it to your hair jig.

Now, there is nothing to stop everyday, from being a good hair day.