In Package
Let’s look at a new piece of terminal tackle from the folks at Dirty Jigs called the Pivot Point Football Jig. A lot of us use football jigs this time of year for fishing deep and probing humps, islands or crawling down channels.
This new jig is designed to allow your soft plastic more freedom of movement by employing a second eye on the football with the hook attached to it. The two loops are on opposite sides of the jig head with the line tie being at 60 degrees and the other loop holding the eyelet of a Gamakatsu Superline Offset EWG Hook.
The theory behind this jig is that, with this configuration, as you’re retrieving your lure, it cannot only float more freely but also move side to side. This being a more natural presentation that may result in more bites. Okay, so that’s the idea. Now, how does it play out in the real world?
The Action
We decided to use some of our favorite craw imitations to start with to see what the rigging was going to be like and then, hows the action? Without a thought, I slid my first bait on the hook only to be reminded that for this to work the way it’s supposed to, you can’t cover the eye of the hook. That means that you are going to have to penetrate less material on your choice of plastics then you might be used to. In my case, I just pulled it off and started over again, paying attention to make this adjustment.
When you get it right, there is near total movement allowed for your lure. Cool, just what is supposed to happen.
I took my first cast with the Pivot Point jig, let it hit the bottom and started a slow dragging to see if I would be able to feel the added movement of my lure. Yes, it is something that your hands will pick up especially when you bump into something and the lure swings quickly to one side or the other. I had to check myself a few times and not set the hook because I wasn’t used to that particular sensation. But you do get accustomed to it easily enough and you’ll probably only set on nothing a couple of times. Anyway, back to using the Pivot Point.
We wanted to test this jig with some different lures so we used the craw for a while which resulted in a couple of good fish. One thing
Make Sure Not To Cover The Eye
though, because you’re impaling less plastic than usual, your bait can take a beating quick, fast and in a hurry. The relatively thin piece of plastic that is near the eye of the hook can get torn without requiring the same force as when using a conventional football jig. However, a drop of glue on the bend of the hook near the eye does help with this.
Next we rigged the Dirty Jigs with a fluke style bait and let fly. I was a little bit wary of doing this but in the end my curiosity won out. It went about the way I expected in that the jig functioned just the way it was supposed to but the first strike tore the head of the bait off the hook. That’s all right, the next one got a drop of glue on the hook.
We were having so much fun with the jig, we threaded a worm on to see what that was going to feel like. Usually, I don’t care to use a football head with a worm but in this case, I figured that there is a potential here to do something different. Honestly, the worm on the pivot point worked out real well, and we caught some fish using this combination.
In the final analysis, the Dirty Jigs Pivot Point Football Jig performed just the way it is billed to. No surprises, just a good solid product that does what it’s supposed to.
| Dirty Jigs Pivot Point Football | |
|---|---|
| Overall Rating |   |
| Probably the best football head out there | |
See ya’ on the water …
If you're jigging at night, you may catch a cat