If you’re fishing in areas with heavy vegetation or overgrown weeds, it can get a little irritating having to deal with snags and the need to get rid of weeds after every cast. Using a weed guard helps to reduce the snagging.
You can either buy pre-made weedless hooks or jigheads that come with a weed guard. Or, DIY your own. Here’s a simple jig modification you can use to make your own weedless jig heads (and even hooks):
DIY Weed Guard
What you need
- Jig head (or hook)
- ~8cm of Thick monofilament (we use a 20lb monofilament of 0.60mm diameter)
- Fly tying thread
- Fly Tying Vice or something to hold your jig head
- Superglue
- Pliers or strong scissors (to cut monofilament)
How to make a weedless hook (jighead)
- Tie in fly thread onto the jighead, at the eye
- Anchor your monofilament onto the jighead, positioning the middle of the monofilament to the jighead
- Fold your monofilament onto itself
- Tighten with a couple of loops around the existing knot
- Position one of the monofilaments in line with the hook shank
- Cut off the extra monofilament
- Trim remaining monofilament so that it extends just past the barb of the hook
- Finish off with a whip finish
If you prefer to learn visually, here’s our video tutorial:
This jig modification survived 7 peacock basses in a row, and continues to go strong. The additional step of folding the monofilament onto itself really helped to anchor the weed guard in place, making it indestructible (well…almost).
If it looks too complicated or if you’re new to jig fly tying, here’s a simpler modification for you:
Jig Modification for Weed Guard V1
We’ve found that this version comes off easily after several rounds of fishing, especially when you have had the chance to fight larger sized fish.
Let us know how it goes for you!