We’ve been fishing a not so new jig for several months now that for some reason, just hasn’t gotten a lot of attention. Like you, we’ve got our favorite jigs, swim jigs, bladed jigs, football head jigs etc. But we’ve never had one with a sink rate this slow.
We’re talking about the Custom Lures Unlimited Zero Gravity Jig which has a sink rate of about 1foot every 3 seconds even with a trailer. Yup, you heard right, this is not a typo. This jig sinks slower than molasses in January even though it is a “full sized jig”.
How? Here is the simple answer. The Zero Gravity Jig uses a non-metal arkie style head that is so light the overall weight of this jig is a published .21 oz. That is with the skirting material, hook and weed guard factored in.
Traditionally, if you wanted to change the rate of fall on your jig, you would switch trailers to bulk it up which in turn provided more resistance in the water slowing the descent. Yes, this works to an extent but let’s get real, a 1/2 oz. head falls like a 1/2 oz. head. This also dictates the swimming motion of the typical jig.
There are a number of ways you can control the running depth of a traditional jig too but again, they all depend on the angler having at least a modicum of skill with a minimum of knowledge.
Slowing WAAAY Down
The Zero Gravity allows anyone to attain a near horizontal, slow fall out of a jig even with a trailer of your choice.
Custom Lures arms the jig with a 4/0 black nickel VMC hook, a fusion banded skirt and a matching weedguard. The available colors cover a wide range of applications without getting other worldly or to far out of the mainstream.
Matching any number of trailers to the skirt is no problem as we have fished it with Paca Chunks, small swimbaits, other crawfish imitations, small jerkbaits, and even stickbaits. Some of these combinations may not be your standard trailers but because this jig is so light, it is more heavily influenced by the trailer and its actions than a standard, lead headed jig.
This is important because by changing your trailer, the entire jig reacts far more than the run of the mill jig. Put on a boot tail swimbait and the whole jig has a more pronounced side to side wobble that looks more natural than just the trailer having action.
Rig it with a Rage Craw and the whole jig is moving side to side in the water or keeping the pincers together results in the whole bait waving up and down on the retrieve. While the skirt material provides drag so that the jig doesn’t just barrel roll out of control, this ability to accentuate the trailers natural motion has, in our opinion, contributed to the success we’ve had using this jig.
Unique Abilities
The end result of all this experimentation with different trailers is that we found that the Zero Gravity jig has a myriad of potential actions. It can behave like a swimbait, a jerkbait, a standard jig, a crankbait, a wakebait or a stickbait all depending on what trailer you put on it and how you work it.
The Zero Gravity Jig also has a much more horizontal fall than the standard jig. Yes, sometimes it seems as though it’s taking a millennium to reach a few feet in depth but that fall rate has been instrumental in triggering bites for us from lethargic bass.
This near neutral descent allows you to target areas that standard jigs just aren’t comfortable in such as running slowly through Lily pads, over the top of submerged grass, trees or stumps. Keeping a jig off the bottom in skinny water is another area that is tailor made for this jig.
The ability to use it for an ultra-slow presentation is unmatched. We’ve used it for a wake bait, or crawled it over grass and allowed it sink slowly into holes. This presentation has been absolutely deadly for us.
How Does It Cast?
We were really concerned with how well this bait was going to cast because of its lack of weight and the fact that anytime you’re throwing a skirted bait, the skirt material acts like a parachute, catching wind, slowing down your cast and possibly knocking it off course.
While we did experience that, it wasn’t nearly as dramatic as we thought it was going to be prior to fishing it. We wound up using the Zero Gravity on a Daiwa CT Type-R spooled with 10# co-polymer on a 7’ medium light rod. This set up gave us all the accuracy, distance and feel we needed to use the jig effectively no matter which trailer we were using with it at the time.
There are a couple of things that you need to be aware of however. If you’re using the Zero Gravity for a lift and fall, yo-yo type retrieve, it takes a while for it to settle back to the depth you started at. Another is that if you’re wanting a horizontal retrieve, keep your rod tip down because it will rise with any sudden movement.
If there is anything we would like to see in future models it would be the addition of a trailer keeper and re-positioning the weed guard. We believe that it wouldn’t affect the action of the jig to change the angle of the guard so that it is just a bit further from the hook point than it is now.
The bottom line is that the Zero Gravity Jig is one of those lures that now that we’ve had the opportunity to fish it for a while, it will always be within reach because it has proven to be so versatile especially under tough conditions.
| Custom Lures Zero Gravity Jig | |
|---|---|
| Overall Rating |   |
| A fantastic way to slow down | |
See ya’ on the water …
