The Starship Jig

A Galactic Jig Modification 
David Hutton
Palmetto Fly n Fish
Jan 8, 2021 (update 2025)

I have always done poorly with jigs and soft plastics. Supposedly they are the number one artificial bait, ever, at least according to Field and Stream:

Curly Tail Grub Is #1

But, the jig-and-soft plastic lure has left me in the lurch, never producing all that well.
Well-meaning people have said, “Just add a piece of worm to the thing – that'll fix it.”
This practice of adding live bait to an artificial lure is called, "tipping," by the way. 

Now, to be fair, the jig itself aids in casting, and the combination of baited hook and weighted head form a compact presentation. I have used them a lot that way - jigs are effective with live bait. Add a worm, and it's on!

But the soft plastic portion creates a new thing... a lure.
My thinking has always been that live bait should NOT be needed with lures.
As the jig/soft plastic combo is a lure, and is reputedly #1 among all lures, well, I reckon it shouldn't need "tipping."
I mean, if you are tipping the lure, you can't say the lure did the job.
Really, all you have done is create a more elaborate way to present a cricket.
In the end, I wondered what all the hoopla is about.

"Jigs? I dunno...."

Which started me analyzing what might be wrong with these things – or what might be wrong with me. 

This could go either way.

What's With The Jig Anyway?

So after studying the jig and grub for awhile, I came to an obvious conclusion:

They don't really do all that much but fall to the bottom.

You can hop them.
You can bounce them.
You can drag them.
You can retrieve them

But in the end, their main trick is to go back to the bottom. They may have a wiggly tail, but they're made of lead, after all.

“So what if they didn't sink so fast”? I wondered.
This lead me to try lightweight versions. These took longer to get to the bottom, but you sacrifice good contact with the lure. Its hard to tell what's happening with them.
“Lets go the other way,” I mused, “...lets make them really heavy.”
Yeah, that's no good either. Too heavy and you may as well be fishing with a millstone.

I ended up with a lot of different jig heads over time, in several styles, colors, shapes, etc.
But that darned plummeting action just stuck out like sore thumb.

The Spark
Prior to that time, I had been using a totally different kind of lure to catch fish.
It was a micro-size Johnson Silver Minnow, with a soft plastic trailer on the rear.
It was nothing more than the old spoon-and-pork lure, but downsized.
Now that was something.
The old Johnson Silver Minnow doesn't weigh all that much compared to it's large surface area, so it wobbles... it's really a weedless, wobble spoon.
Add a soft plastic curly tail to this lightweight, wobbling lure and it changes the game.

Now it becomes a slow falling, twisting, spiraling, swimming kind of lure. I caught as many fish on that seductive, slow swimming drop-action as on any retrieve.
That's when I realized I wanted THAT from a jig.

Experiments
I first tried squashing regular ball head jigs into a flattened profile, using a specially made punch.

It produced a wide, flat bottom surface that showed some promise. It was kind of like the Space Shuttle entering orbit. But it wasn't quite there, and it still tended to just drop.
I wanted my brainchild to swim, and to fly.

Which is where I suppose the idea finally struck me.
“If something is to fly, it needs a wing,” I muttered.

Well, I guess I muttered. 

Okay...I probably muttered.

It was one of those times, just before the brainstorm hits, that one mutters.
So I'm pretty sure I muttered.

The Starship Jig

The Starship Jig Is Not Original
What I did then is just what I said – I added a "wing," in the form of a clear plastic disc.

In earlier years, I was an aviation electronics technician in US Navy rotary wing squadrons – helicopters, in other words. Those who know something about aerodynamics will immediately recognize the connection between a rotary wing and a disc wing.

Basically, that's what I came up with.

As often happens, though, I learned I am late to this party.
"Jig Discs" have, in fact, been around before I dreamed them up.

The things come in packs of 15, in fact, with nice logo lettering, even.

Here's what they look like:

Here's a link: Jig Disks

You'll notice there that I said, “they come in packs of 15....”
But I found that you can't go anywhere on the linked website to actually PAY for them. The pay links are dead-ends.

Everything else on the site seems to work, and there are some innovative ideas there. But if you can't actually purchase the stuff, well.... it might be a good idea to know how to make them yourself.

So I made my own.

I also changed them up a bit, in the form of a tight fitting attachment point.

The commercial Jig Disks have a large hole that slips over the eye, necessitating the use of a snap clip or something like it to hold the whole affair together. This does make it so they might fit on any jig, so that's good.

With, mine I used a press fit over the eye of the jig, i.e, the hole is smaller than the eye, so no extra hardware is needed.
That seems to be pretty good, too.

You could make these as big as you want, of course. Mine are are about 1/2" in diameter, sized for bluegill jigs - 1/32 and 1/64.
If you have a magnifier, you could go smaller.
Obviously, you could also go larger if you want.
The one thing you have to watch out for is that the disc doesn't interfere with the hookup, by getting in the way of the point.

So lets be clear: I broke no new ground with my panfish-size discs. Someone beat me to it, and I'm not taking credit for the idea.
However, I can make them, where I can't BUY the others.

So, I did something special in my mind.
Don't stop me, I'm on a roll!

Making the Starship Jig
The first Starship Jigs I made were cut from clear plastic, heavy stuff taken from product packaging. I just traced a circle and used scissors. 
From there I tried punches. This is a bit neater and delivers a more consistent result. My homemade punches are thin walled tubing, stainless mostly, ground to a cutting edge.
But you can also buy punch sets to help ease the job.
Here's a set of hollow punches from Harbor Freight:

Hollow Punch Set

You don't need machinists grade stuff for punching discs from plastic, so these would do fine at $8.99
For five times as much, you can get punch and die sets on ebay. A little more precision, and a very cool tool.
Whether the cost is justified is your call.

Once cut out, I then poke a teeny hole in the center with an awl or embroidery needle. This hole is then forced over the jigs eye; I just use my thumb to do this.
The idea is to have the disc grip the wire shaft below the eye. NOTE: the hole must be fit to the hooks wire diameter, and not to the width of the eye.

Now you have a jig head with a "flying disc" attached on top. And they're so cheap, you can have them for all your jig heads.

So How About That Name?
The genesis of the idea was the rotary wing of helicopters.

But they really look a Federation starship from the hit sci-fi franchise, “Star Trek.”
Kinda geeky, I know.

Starfleet Saladin-class interceptor

But I'm sure you see the resemblance, and that is how they got their name, “Starship Jigs.”
Like the discs themselves, this isn't original, either. But they have the desired effect, and they do go where no jig has gone before.

The jig is slowed and even has some rudimentary "flight" characteristics on the fall. It spirals and seems to float a little as it falls through the water. Its something of a swim-glide action.

I should stress that most of this "flying" action depends on hydrodynamic drag induced by the trailer. In other words, you need something dragging behind to help the disc "hang" in the water. Jig bodies with curly tails work well, and a large tuft of marabou or buck tail may also work, too.

I came to preferring shad dart jigs for this, because of their elongated shape, but you can do it with any jig.

Where Are They Now?
I must confess that I never really wrung out the concept; I tried them, they worked, I moved on.
I got into fly fishing around that time and that ruined me. I haven't really revisited them until recently. I'm currently working on another lure project, so I have to get that sorted out first. But I'll make some more Starship Jigs for this season and do some updates.

In the meantime, you might want to tinker around with it and see what happens.

Thanks for reading, and Tight Lines


David
Palmetto Fly n Fish

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