I love all the unique bites you can experience in bass fishing. For me, the most rewarding part is finding a lure that gets bit and then taking it all over the lake and experiencing that same bite over and over again. One of my favorite bites to get on is a good swim jig bite. And I’ve really liked fishing with the Freedom FT Swim Jig in the last year.
I don’t have a great swim jig bite on Kentucky Lake. There are small windows where it gets good. But for the most part our lake is not setup ideally for a good swim jig bite. I grew up bass fishing in Arkansas and Florida and back in those days there were no such things as swim jigs. Back then we just called it winding.
“Ahh. Just winding a jig.”
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The Freedom Tackle FT Swim Jig includes all the features I look for in a good swim jig now.
I grew up swimming an Arkie style jig through bank grass, like water willow and pencil reeds and any laydowns I came across going down the bank. Back then you lost or missed as many bass as you caught winding a jig. And as I got better at it, it became all about speed. I think the bigger ones react better to speed than anything. I think you catch a lot more on a slow steady retrieve but I think you catch the bigger ones winding it fast.
Now I say all that to say today’s swim jigs sure are a lot nicer to fish. Finding a good swim jig gives you a lot more advantages now than back in the day. And the FT Swim Jig is a good one for several reasons.
First, it has a vertical line tie. I like a vertical line tie when I am swimming a jig “through” cover meaning I’m going to swim it through standing grass usually on the bank. Now some guys like a horizontal line tie but that is usually better when you need to crawl your swim jig over things.
But usually for me a swim jig is fished next to cover and through cover and not over it. I will winding it through lanes in the water willow or pencil reeds, next to the side of a dock, down the side of a laydown, and other fast horizontal retrieves.
The head is designed to swim fast through cover but has a slight flat widening bottom that curves upward slightly at the nose. This head design lets me scoot it through cover quickly and when it hits something it easily just pops over and keeps on swimming. The big trick with a swim jig is to never let it come out of the water. It quits swimming when it breaks the surface so I want to contact cover, move fast but never break the surface. Almost bulging.
The FT Swim Jig head design allows for that perfect swim every cast.
Second, it has a great keeper. I put the trailer on and I don’t want to have to continually mess with it as I skip and wind the bait around quickly through cover. And I don’t want to have to fix it every time a fish nips and I set the hook.
The FT Swim Jig Keeper is a multi barbed keeper that really locks your trailer in place. It does not move or come off easily. It makes the swim jig one cohesive tool for getting bites and covering water.
I have gone back to Arkansas several times and fished the FT Swim Jig and it has been a super fun jig to fish. I have caught some late summer missiles and some fat prespawn jumbos alike on it.
I’ve used several of the colors now and really like the White, Olive Shad, Black Blue and Green Pumpkin Candy colors to cover all my bases. A swim jig can mimic shad, bluegill, perch, and even crawfish depending on how and where you swim it.
I’ve found a dark color for dirty water, a bright white color to mimic shad on a shad spawn, a bluegill color and a natural color for clear water cover all your bases. You don’t need twenty colors. You just need 4. The FT Swim Jig comes in 12 colors so you can find your right combination for the waters you fish there.
The fish get really hooked well on the FT Swim Jig because it has a super sharp and super stout black-nickel hook in it as well as a medium stiffness weed guard. You don’t want a super stout weed guard. Just enough to keep you from snagging on a stick up too much. So this combination fishes well on both heavy fluorocarbon and braided fishing line alike for getting rock solid hooklets and landing a lot of bass.
The jigheads have the size printed tiny on the underside of the head so you can throw a bunch in your bag or box and go and know exactly what you are fishing when you dig it back out of your tackle.
At $4.99, the FT Swim Jig is a very good swim jig that checks all the boxes:
- Strong, sharp hook
- Good weed guard thickness
- Keeling head design
- Rock solid keeper
- Great colors
So grab a few and get in on that spring and summer swim jig bite that can be one of the most fun bites you will find all year. Find the FT Swim Jigs at these retailers:
