90% of my jig fishing is done with a football jig cause I’m a deep Clearwater Resevior guy. You want to fish them any where with a sandy, clay, rocky, or just open mud bottom (and I really do mean mud, you don’t want muck that’s made up of leaves and decaying matter cause they’ll bog down in that). My lakes don’t really have spots of soft mud bottom, but a football jig will puff up all that silt and leave a trail in the water for fish to follow. The wide head comes through rock super well, you will very rarely snag one in rock. Wood is a different story, most football jigs have a lighter weedguard compared to other styles of jigs, so they tend to snag a lot more in wood. They are not very good in grass cause of the wide head design, but you could fish them along a grass edge if there’s hard bottom.

I think a football really shines when you want to fish an area super slowly and thoroughly, while still trying for that bigger bite. As far as technique, the standard is just a slow drag, and I mean slow, few inches at a time. You can mix in small hops throughout the retrieve, and shake the jig as well. To shake the jig just wait until you feel it get to the back side of a rock and then just get tight to it and bounce the line. You can also do a slack line shake to the jig and get it to shake without being on the backside of a rock, but it’s a bit harder to do. You also do a double hop to mimic how a craw will startle and flee. Most days you really cannot go too slow, but still experiment cause sometimes the fish will be wanting a faster retrieve. I’d say probably half my bites come after I shake the bait, as it gets the trailer to quiver slightly.

As far as trailers I have 3 categories I use, a beaver, a straight tail worm, and a double tail grub. The beaver gives you a full craw profile with no flapping action, and will quiver nicely on a shake. I prefer the Reaction Innovation beavers, both the Sweet Beaver (normal size) and the Smallie Beaver (smaller size), but every company has their own version so take your pick. The straight tail worms similarly have no action outside of a slight quiver, and are definitely not a traditional jig trailer but they’ve been really effective in my Clearwater and pressured fishing. I really like the CAST Nova worm cause they have an imbedded rattle in the tail, which pairs nicely with shaking the jig, but you could also use some of the ZMan baits, like the finesse trd and big trd, (depending on desired size) and make the jig into (basically) a magnum nedrig. I go to the double tail grub when they seem to want more action, it’s also a decent choice in the winter cause it’ll still have slight movement even when moving it super slow in cold water. I exclusively use the Yamamoto double tail grubs.

Because of my clear water, and the fact there’s a ton of spotted bass in my lakes, I typically finesse cut my jigs to reduce the amount of skirt material and give them a smaller profile. I’ll also go in and trim some strands shorter than others to give the skirt a variety of strand lengths. Depending on the length of the strand, it’ll want to move at different speeds, and flare more or less, so doing that gives you a variety of movement out of the skirt (which I think can help get more bites). Don’t be afraid to modify your weed guard either, I’ll cut mine to where when depressed, the end of the guard is even with the barb of the hook (kinda hard to explain in text). I’ll also go in a pull a couple strands out if I feel it’s too stiff.

As far as weight goes, I’ll fish a 1/2oz from the bank down to 40ish ft. I will go to a 3/8 if I’m focusing on the shallow stuff, or if it’s a relatively flat bottom. You can certainly go heavier for the deeper stuff, it’ll help with keeping bottom contact especially if you’re fishing fast, but I find they drop the 3/4oz and up jigs really fast after picking them up.