Provide fun fishing alternative Colored jugs
Jug fishing is not everybody’s cup of tea, but it can be fun as well as productive. It’s an alternative worth considering.
Jug fishing also can be combined with regular rod-and-reel work on an outing. Rig up a few jugs, bait them and drop them in the water around where you are working with the rod. You’ll have multiple baits in the water, and you can rig these at varying depths until fish begin hitting.
In olden times, jugs for fishing were almost always glass Chlorox bottles (clear) or glass Purex bottles (brown). Yes, you had to be careful or they would break. They also were fairly heavy.
Now we have plastic containers of all sorts that make jug fishing even more versatile.
The two-liter soft drink bottles have taken over — but not entirely. Check around the house for other discarded containers that may be even more suitable. Any plastic container of at least a quart in size can work. Some of these are brightly colored, an advantage over clear soft drink bottles because of better visibility.
Clear bottles can be difficult to see on the water if there is a little ripple to the surface or if the sun is in your eyes.
Some plastic containers have handles or necks suitable for tying a line on.
Households may accumulate bright red, blue or yellow laundry-detergent jugs with sturdy handles for tying on the fishing line. These laundry room discards are somewhere between two and three quarts in size.
Jug-fishing anglers turn to gimmicks like painting all or part of the clear soft drink jugs with bright paint, either inside or outside the jug. Some put a strip of reflective tape or just colored plastic tape on them.
Discarded plastic jugs are free, and they are durable.
Regulations of the Arkansas Game and Fish Commission require the user’s name and address or driver’s license number on each jug, and a maximum of 20 per person can be in use at one time. Marking pens are good for labeling the jugs.
Find something to transport your jugs with. Line can be wound around the jugs and hooks secured with a piece of duct tape. A number of jugs will fit into a plastic milk basket. Another handy item is a large mesh duck decoy bag — as long as the hook points are under tape. Even a large plastic garbage bag can work.
A benefit of smaller jugs, one- and two-quart size, is they don’t weigh nearly as much as the old gallon glass jugs. A hefty catfish can take a quart-size jug under the surface, but chances are the resistance will bring it back up fairly quickly. For most catfish and for crappie, the quart-size jug will work just fine.
Wind is very much a factor in jug fishing. Too much wind, and you had just as well stay home. A little wind can be a help in moving the jugs slowly and in keeping a bit of movement down below with the bait.
One old jug fishermen in east Arkansas had a tool he carried along, a wood-handled dip net with the end opposite the net affixed with a large screw hook. This let him reach out and slip the hook through the handle of the jug for easier retrieving. He used plastic milk jugs, not the handle-less soft drink bottles. He got the jug in hand, reversed the tool’s handle and scooped up the hooked catfish with the net.
With most jugs, the line is tied toward one end, so if a fish is hooked, the jug will likely tip up as well as bob around — a signal to the fisherman.
Some years back this writer and a friend were enjoying some white-bass action on Lake Dardanelle in early spring when we noticed a flatbottom boat with two fellows slowly moving.
Neither man was paddling, and the motor was silent. “Got a good one on,” one of the men told us and pointed to an orange jug in front of the boat’s bow. A hooked fish was pulling the boat.Read More ...
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