Slow Pitching

A technique that is catching on in Tasmania

Metal jigs are no new revolutionary pieces of fishing equipment but as angling progresses with new innovations we find ourselves tweaking and customising some of the original lures and techniques. A relatively new technique which has been dubbed slow jigging and slow pitch jigging, is a new take on metal jig fishing. Where instead of your standard metal slug or knife style jig, the slow pitch style is designed to be fished vertically and give more action with less movement. This allows you to target your slower moving and usually much tastier demersal fish species.

Types of slow jigs

Slow pitch jigs: slow pitch jigs are a small oval like shaped jig which is flat on one side and convex on the other, this shape when sunk down creates a falling leaf motion which is extremely enticing to bottom fish species and gives you maximum chance to have fish bite on the drop as it takes a little longer for these jigs to fall. They can be fished super slow which works perfectly when your target species are a little bit lethargic on those tougher days.

Occy/tentacle jigs : this is a group of a few different sorts of jigs that I’ve rounded in to one to simplify it as they are all fished very similarly. This group contains

Jarvis Wall

the like of the Shimano Baku-Baku, Shimano Lucanus, Vexed Bottom Meats and any of your squid style jigs as well. These jigs are extremely effective and very underutilised as they can get bites out of fish that are not normally encountered on your traditional metal jigs. I have been lucky enough to have caught King George whiting out in 48 metres on a slowly worked Baku-Baku before so you just never know what’s going to come across next! Snapper absolutely love these styles of jig as well. The Bottom Meats are deadly on deep water reefs as they come in very heavy weighted heads. These heads work perfectly for bombing the depths where you can encounter the fine eating Striped Trumpeter or even out over the Continental Shelf where Blue eye Trevalla, Gemfish, Hapuka and Blue Grenadier are all realistic targets, just be prepared to do some winding!

Choosing which jig to use

A great principal to go off when choosing which size or weight jig to run is to know what depths you’re going to be targeting your desired fish in. Ten grams for every ten metres is generally a pretty safe equation to go by. For me if I’m heading out into bass strait to target species like Snapper, Nannygai, Morwong and Swallowtail, I generally use a 60 gram slow pitch jig in either a pink and silver colour or blue, silver and pink. This is mainly because my usual depth I find these fish in is 45-60m so I’ve found that a 60gram jig works just fine. I have mixed it up trying slow occy jigs and the likes, these definitely do work as well and very often do bring in unusual species. For another example if I was fishing off either the East or West coast for Striped Trumpeter in 90-140 metres I’d opt for something like a 100-150 gram Vexed Bottom Meat or a 120 gram slow pitch jig of your brand of choice. I haven’t found that any particular colour works out in these depths but it’s always a confidence booster to have some luminescence or UV on your jig to help draw in fish in the darker waters as the silver off your normal jigs won’t be picking up and reflecting much light down there.

Retrieves

There isn’t anything too technical about the majority of your slow jigging but on tough days implying some different movements into your jigs can change your results from being skunked to having a good day.

Slow pitch jigs : usually the best retrieve for your slow pitch jigs is to kick it up off the bottom maybe 1.5-3 metres with some short sharp stabs or long upward draws of the rod tip. This will vary depending on the fish’s mood on the day. Then the main ingredient to success is to make that jig fall as slow as possible but still impart some natural action on its fall. This will give the slower moving bottom fish more time to eat it as the won’t pick it up off the bottom and very rarely have the confidence to hit the lure on the rise up. On the tough days just hovering the jig a metre off the bottom and slapping your rod butt which basically just makes the jig shake and dance around on the spot can get your jig bit.

Occy style: If I was to introduce someone into slow jigging I would definitely encourage them to try this style as they’re extremely simple to use and there isn’t much user error that can go wrong as they are literally fishing themselves whole time for you. A simple slow lift off the bottom and pause at the top of your lift is all you need. Fish will have no issues hitting one of these styles of lures stationary.

What Area To Look For

A good quality sonar is imperative to being able to do this style of fishing, you will still find success blind drifting a reef but being able to pinpoint your fish and dropping on them makes it a thousand times easier. The quality bottom fish you target over the reefy bottoms will congregate together and always show up in a big thick patch either on or just up off the bottom. Positioning yourself to be able to drop into these masses of fish will improve your catch rate immensely. You don’t always have to be on hard reef either, it pays to scout around as a lot of the time fish will be just on the edges of reefs or on rubble patches, if you are on any of these areas and you see something on your sounder screen, definitely drop on it and you may be surprised with the results. A lot of the time fish will be on a significant rise or what we call pins in the reef where the bottom spikes up which is an attractive bit of structure to bait and predators. These areas can hold some excellent fish and a lot of the time it’s where big fish will hang out as it’s a happy hunting ground for them.

Gear

I like to run two seperate rods for different applications. If I’m doing my light slow pitching in the Strait I’ll use a 6ft pe1.5 rod in an overhead version coupled up with a 200 size overhead reel. This is just perfect for working the lighter jigs and doesn’t suck the fun out of catching generally smaller fish like your pinky snapper, nannygai and morwong. I like to run 15kg braid and a 15kg fluorocarbon leader, fish can get line shy at times so I’ve found 15kg is a good base to begin with for a days jigging.

For striped trumpeter work, I beef my rod up to a 6’2 pe3 overhead rod and couple that up with a 300 size reel although I have used my 200 size and it’s fine, line capacity does become a worry though. For this style, I run 20kg braid and an 32kg fluorocarbon leader, this leader is mainly used as with the bigger fish and deeper depths the line can get knocked around a bit. It’s just that little bit extra insurance!

As for jigs I mainly will use the Little Jack Metald Addict range of slow jigs, these jigs are extremely lifelike and offer an irresistible action on the drop to a lot of fish species. These jigs perform excellently in Bass strait on everything from nannygai, snapper, morwong, swallowtail, silver dory and many other species. If I’m targeting trumpeter, I will still opt for a Little Jack Metal Addict jig but the occy style jigs are my preference such as the Vexed Bottom Meats, these are deadly effective as they can be fished extremely slow down in the depths.

I hope this insight will get you excited to try this form of fishing, it’s super fun and makes collecting fish for the table so enjoyable! Even better there’s no need to buy stinky bait ever again and it’s such a clean way of fishing. Thanks for reading and I hope to see you out on the water jigging up some fish!

Overhead setups are great to use while jigging and very effective on these beautiful nannygai.