New Wiggly Jiggly worthy of test run in your tackle box

The jighead is dead." That's a bold statement bound to catch any angler's attention, especially at an event such as the International Convention of Allied Sportfishing Trades, where the walkways are full of fishermen who have logged more than a few years on the water.

So I took the bait and walked over to the Logic Lures booth to see what was behind the company's claim regarding the jighead's tenuous future. There I found a new product called the Wiggly Jiggly, but rather than being a replacement that will lead to the jighead's demise, the Wiggly Jiggly is just a jighead with a new twist. However, it might be a new twist worth a test run in your tackle box.

What Logic Lures has done is create a pivot point about one-third of the way down the jighead's full length, where the bottom of the head meets the top of the hook shank. By so doing, the company believes it has created a jighead that will enhance the motion of any swim bait and produce 90 percent more action in the bait, though I'm not sure how you measure that. With the pivot point, "your baits will move from the back of the head to the tail," designer Captain Allen Salinas of Logic Lures explained. "We're trying to give it a natural presentation."

With the Wiggly Jiggly in hand, what Salinas said seemed to make sense. If you have a somewhat flexible hook shank rather than a solid, one-piece shank, one would think you will get more movement out of a plastic bait. There was only one way to find out, so I took a trip to Lake Mead on Saturday and put the Wiggly Jiggly to the test. Since the shoreline in Boulder Harbor has been giving up a few stripers, that seemed a logical place to see what the Wiggly Jiggly could do.

For the test, I used a white Flash Shad, a new plastic by Kinami Baits. I found an area that was somewhat protected from the wind and went to work. On the first few casts, I used a straight retrieve. That didn't do much for me, so I started twitching the end of the rod on the retrieve, and then I noticed a difference over traditional jigheads. The pivoting hook shank on the Wiggly Jiggly seemed to yield a faster response when I twitched the rod than I get out of a fixed-shank jighead. The result was quick darting action on the bait that seemed to better resemble the natural movement of small baitfish.

I replaced the Flash Shad with a Hula Swimmer, one of Yamamoto's new offerings. It has a traditional tail designed to give the bait motion, so I thought the movement might be more exaggerated with the Wiggly Jiggly. With a straight retrieve, the tail did its job and created motion in the bait, and that movement seemed to stem from the pivot point in the hook shank. But I can't say definitively that the Wiggly Jiggly allowed more movement than a traditional jighead.

However, when twitching the end of the rod, or using a jigging motion, the bait seemed to respond in similar fashion to the Flash Shad. The response was immediate, and the quick darting action imparted on the bait was noticeable.

I don't think the traditional jighead is dead after all, but I do think the Wiggly Jiggly could be another effective tool in your tackle box.

Freelance writer Doug Nielsen is a conservation educator for the Nevada Department of Wildlife. His "In the Outdoors" column, published Thursday in the Las Vegas Review-Journal, is not affiliated with or endorsed by the NDOW. Any opinions he states in his column are his own. He can be reached at intheoutdoorslv@gmail.com.