Product Review: Little Jack Metal Adict

I’ve always had a fascination with high quality lures from Japan, they are the undisputed leaders of the tackle industry in my eyes. You need only look at the tackle world today to see who dominates in terms of looks, feel and revolutionary technology that’s constantly evolving year after year that consistently amazes us every year.

The most common knowledge is that beautiful looking products lure in anglers more than fish itself, this is absolutely true (and I also just like having nice things!). Fish aren’t always the brightest of creatures and will truly eat anything on their given day.Just look at some of the incredible captures back in the day when the tackle industry hadn’t boomed, anglers were using lures I wouldn’t look at twice these days. Japanese companies now combine beautiful finishes and using proven shapes to craft a fish catching weapon and a little extra touch of “special sauce” to give us the most important factor of all – confidence. It’s hard not to have a good stare at the jigs produced by Japanese tackle companies, like Little Jack, and not be impressed. But the reason I think they catch is simple. Micro jigging itself is one of the best ways to just catch a fish, in fact one of the most underrated methods and here’s why:

Size

“Matching the hatch” – the famous saying. A smaller presentation has always been a good fallback option, especially when fish are shut down. A smaller prey is easier to swallow and eat, a profile usually perfectly imitated by a small jig. Your species list will usually increase as you just broaden the potential as big and little fish eat small prey.

Look

As mentioned, if it catches my attention, I’ll catch a fish's attention. There are also more subtle things which I think help. UV reactive finishes on lures transmit a different spectrum of light when the sun hits it, something that can be seen when you look at a UV lure in the sun, giving off a purple/blue hue. I’m a big fan of lumo jigs too, even in the daytime, but at times I will go with the natural baitfish patterns as they just look so, well, natural! Given the jig is being worked slower it makes a bit of sense to me that a more natural looking bait is more likely to grab a fish’s attention.

Action

If you have jigged enough it’s easy to tell what shape the lure is to know how it will swim. Usually ‘micro jigs’ have the irregular sides and cuts and contours on both or one side of the jig to give it the erratic fall, when it cuts through the water the shape will naturally cause it to tumble and dart around. This mimics an injured baitfish, the beautiful finish just gives me more confidence that it will get attention and using a jig with more faithful action is the most important factor in any lure. The Little Jack Metal Adict 06 immediately goes into a perfectly horizontal fluttering quiver when they start descending and what I really liked is they flutter straight down, giving the fish a good opportunity to pounce.

Retrieve

The jig does all the work for you, people always ask me what kind of retrieve I practice and honestly I don’t have a regular retrieve technique. I always mix it up with twitches off the bottom like a plastic, or a slow mechanically style retrieve. Sometimes a slow pitch or lift up and then just letting the jig do its tumble back to the bottom is all that is required. I make it species relevant, for flathead and jew I will keep it close to the bottom for longer and more steady, constant retrieves for pelagics. There have been many times where we have been marking clear fish and just mixing the retrieve, constantly keeping the jig in the fish's face to trigger a bite – it just stays in the ‘zone’ longer. At times I like to cover some ground with them and give them a good cast, similar principles to what the landbased shore jiggers do, I almost work them back like a plastic, leaving a little slack in the line to give the jig more action and watching the braid closely to detect anything unusual. I will generally strike at anything, even a bite from a nice fish can be subtle but more often the bite is an expected ‘donk’ as vacuum up the sinking lure.

We have managed to get another replenishment of the highly sought after Little Jack Metal Adict 06 jigs, they were one of the most popular products we have been able to source. There are also larger lures now available in 100g, 125g and 150g sizes.