I’ve been making my own skirts and even pouring my own jigheads for my skirted bass jigs for more than two decades. I’ve designed some of the skirts you’ve probably used on some of your own jigs. I also had a football head that many companies use on jigs I made a decade ago before it was cool thanks to a company that now is offering it’s components to the public online at LurePartsOnline.com.
I’ve been buying some new designs of heads and custom made skirts from them recently largely due to the fact that Bill Lowen is helping design jigheads and skirts with them. They have everything you need to build lures from jigs to buzzbaits and beyond. They also have the largest selection of jighead styles you’ll find for making your own jigs for bass fishing. Definitely worth a look whether you are a serious tinkerer when it comes to fishing lures or just want to dabble.
Lowen released a line of jigheads and skirts as part of his signature series with LPO. I’ve been fishing the Lowen Finesse Jig a lot this year. It’s got a small footprint but a solid hook. It works well as both a casting jig and a finesse flipping jig on lighter tackle. I’ve been pitching it around boat docks, sparse cover and fishing it on rocky banks.
The head features a compact hook, a lower angle on the weed guard with less strands for better hookups. The compactness of the jig gives it a good hookup and better weedless characteristics around cover even with a thinner weed guard which you need on a casting jig on light line and deep water.
It’s rocker-style head and scooped nose helps it come over cover easily and stand up for a second on a lift and drop retrieve. I also think this will be an ideal jig for when the water is colder, and fishing slower and more subtly in small areas in the late fall and winter can be a big deal.
I took it down on the Tennessee River below Kentucky Lake Dam on one of my recent outings and had a great day pitching it around bushes and flooded laydowns and fishing it on rocky banks in current. That type of environment can eat up an inordinate amount of jigs because the current will sweep heavier jigs into the rock crevices and wedge them where you can’t get them out. But I was pleasantly surprised how well the Lowen Finesse jig fished in this situation.
The hook is not heavy gauge, but it held up well without much flex on a short leash in cover. But you can also get a good hookset on a long cast on lighter line because of the thinner wire. That’s because a smaller hook won’t flex as much as longer hook.
This has been the money jig Lowen has used in many of his good finishes. He’s one the best shallow water anglers in professional bass fishing, and he’s finally sharing one of his well-kept secrets with other anglers. I got a bunch of these heads and skirts now because I trust him more than most when it comes to shallow bass tackle.
Check out the other cool jigs and skirts in Lowen’s Signature Series at LurePartsOnline.com.
