Jiggin' for Bass

As I was fishing several months ago under a partly cloudy sky with patchy fog starting to set in, the reality hit that fall weather was upon us. The temperature when I arrived at one of my favorite fishing holes was a beautiful and sunny 70 degrees and now I was starting to get a bit chilled. The weather had taken on a new identity in the past hour or so. The fishing had started to slow down as well. The hits were plentiful and constant when the sun was beaming down upon the dam and the bass were stacked around the rocks adjacent to the weed beds just begging to be caught. I had already landed around 15 nice keepers when the sun disappeared behind a cloud and failed to show its face again. I began to rummage through my tackle bag trying desperately to find the perfect bass wrangling lure that would take my catch rate back to an acceptable level. I threw a spinnerbait for a while and then switched to a Rat-L-Trap. I then threw a few in-line spinners followed by some crawfish imitation plastics and followed up with the Junebug colored stick worm I had caught all of the previous fish on. Still, I could not find a bite.

As I sat on the bank of the pond I started to think very hard about my present situation. I looked around and noticed that the trees were just beginning to shed their dark green colors and change to shades of red, orange and yellow. I reached into my bag and pulled out my box of jigs and selected a 1/4oz model with a brown and orange skirt. I then put a chartreuse plastic craw as a trailer, which made the jig match my surroundings perfectly and flipped the jig towards the rock ledge. The jig was allowed to sit for about 60 seconds and then the slow retrieval process began. A very slow upward motion of the rod tip with a few slight jerks thrown in intermediately was exactly what the bass wanted. After a few retrieves were made and I was waiting for the jig to travel back downward so I could begin the process again, that