The Key Features to Look For on Quality Squid Jigs

Squid jigs are designed to look and behave like the creatures that squid feed on - shrimp, prawns and small fish.

Some aspects of their design make them unique amongst all other fishing lures.

For instance, all my other lures are designed to place a hook in the fishes mouth.

Not so my squid jigs.

No hooks as we would know them, just sharply pointed barbless grapnel-like devices.

But there's a reason for their strange design ...

A Cloth-Covered Body

Unlike fish, cephalopods (that's squid, cuttlefish and octopus) don't grab their prey with their mouths. Having sneaked up close they shoot out two long tentacles to ensnare it, then wrap their other eight tentacles around it. Only then do they start to nibble away at it.

And this is why manufacturers of quality jigs bond a cloth finish to the surface of their lures to give the squid something grippy to hang on to.

Grapnel Hooks

Having engulfed the jig in this way, the squid will now find itself impaled on the double circle of needle-sharp, but barbless, prongs - and if you don't give it any slack line it should stay that way until you lift it out of the water.

Stabilising Side Feathers

These keep the jig properly aligned and stable, and help to give it its shrimp-like action when given the appropriate jerking action by the angler.

Weighted Keel

These work along with the side feathers to keep the jig the right way up, and to improve tracking when drawn through the water.

These jigs are available in several sizes and with keels of various weights, which is normally marked on them in grams. Useful information if you're intending to cast the jig with a spinning outfit, as it governs the rate at which the lure will sink and hence the depth at which it operates on the retrieve.

more details ...

Not all of these jigs have keels. Those that don't are often very slow sinkers and are ideal for use paternoster-style on droppers, and fished as a normal vertical jigging rig.

This one sinks at a rate of 6" (150mm) per second.

Octopus Jigs

These heavily weighted jigs are designed to get down quickly to where the octopi lurk - on the bottom.

Grapnel hooks are again used to accommodate the octopus's similar embracing style of attack. On the metal octopus jig illustrated here, the surface is made grippy by having a light cord bound around it.

Combine your octopus jig with a squid jig as shown here, and you could get yourself a cuttlefish.