Shimano Butterfly Jig
Shimano American Corp.
Irvine, CA
877-577-0600
fish.shimano.com
By Jimmy Fee
When Shimano sales representative Patrick Latham walked into the tackle shop where I worked during the summer of 2005 to present the new Butterfly Jigging “system,” he was met with skepticism from every employee. What I found most dubious were the “assist hooks” dangling off the front of the lure on heavy braided cord. I couldn’t imagine how any striking fish would actually get hooked. Others in the shop found it hard to believe that tuna would strike this slim metal lure. Five years later, Butterfly Jigs have become a staple for fishermen in the Northeast, for both offshore and inshore fishing.
The road to the development of the Butterfly Jig began in the early 1990s in Japan. Many of Shimano’s most innovative products have migrated to the U.S. from across the Pacific Ocean where the company was founded in 1921. The Shimano product development staff studied the techniques anglers in Japan were using to catch fish in depths as great as 500 feet. Almost a decade before anyone I knew ever spooled a braided “superline” onto a reel or tied up a fluorocarbon leader, Shimano was working with these revolutionary products to create an efficient and lightweight fishing system that allowed anglers to catch large fish, like tunas, without bulky, cumbersome tackle.
The system Shimano unveiled in 2005 involves light, yet powerful rods, high-speed reels and specialized wind-on fluorocarbon leaders. The crux of the system is the Butterfly Jig. Though the jigs look simple enough, every aspect of the lure is carefully designed and engineered. The “assist hooks” that I thought suspect actually provide more secure hook-ups than fixed hooks. This is because they give the angler a more direct connection to the fish, and the fish are unable to use the lure as a lever to dislodge the hook. The Butterfly Jig’s “3-D shape” makes them unique among traditional metal jigging lures, like diamond jigs. The shape allows them to slice through the water and sink fast, then dance erratically on the retrieve, in a vertical version of the side-to-side “walk the dog” retrieve familiar to any angler who has fished a Spook-style topwater lure.
When Latham was explaining the system to the crew at the shop that day, I had to stop him when he said the jigs were meant to “walk the dog” underwater. Jigging as I knew it meant lifting and dropping the rod tip, giving the lure a rising and falling “yo-yo” action. I couldn’t fathom a metal jig zigzagging its way through the water column. As opposed to the up-and-down motion used with traditional jigs, Butterfly Jigs are meant to be retrieved with short, fast, lifts of the rod tip paired with a single crank of the reel handle. With this rhythmic retrieve, the jig darts from side to side on its way to the surface, and instead of dropping during the retrieve, pauses momentarily on the no-stretch line as the angler picks up the slack.
The motion of a Butterfly Jig is tough to describe; instead, check out the videos on the Shimano website to understand the motion of the retrieve and to appreciate the sharp, erratic action of the jig as it moves toward the surface. This erratic motion was designed to trigger a “reaction strike” in gamefish. In other words, though a fish might not be actively feeding, the wounded-baitfish action of a Butterfly Jig compels the fish to strike the lure anyhow. And the strikes can be ferocious.
Although the Butterfly Jigging System may have been met with some skepticism from anglers back in 2005, it quickly passed muster with the harshest critics of new fishing gear – the fish.
The lures have especially caught fire with the big-game crowd. Anglers fishing bluefin tuna from North Carolina to Maine have found success with Butterfly Jigs when the fish refuse to rise into a trolling spread. In the offshore canyons, fishermen setting up for a night of chunking have added to their night’s catch by dropping Butterfly Jigs when they see marks on the fish finder. Though the jigs are smaller than the lures anglers usually turn to when targeting tuna, quite often, the tuna are actually feeding on smaller baitfish and shy away from oversized offerings.
The lures are particularly effective when heavy boat traffic and constant fishing pressure make tuna finicky. Anglers watch their fish finders for marks and drop the jigs directly to the fish. Tuna that are too wary to swim into a trolling spread and take a surface lure will eagerly inhale a Butterfly Jig sent down in the water column.
The lures come in three styles – regular, flat-sided and long – and each shines under different circumstances. The regular jigs have a compact design that sinks fast and produces a tight walk-the-dog action that can be effective on fish from bluefish and bass to tuna.
The long Butterfly Jigs make exaggerated side-to-side sweeps on the retrieve and have a rolling, wobbling action on the fall. It’s not uncommon for tuna to smash these jigs as they fall without a single action imparted by the angler. Fishermen need to watch the line vigilantly, and if it looks like they’ve hit “bottom” too early, it’s time to engage the drag and reel like crazy! The more aggressive presentation of the long jigs is meant to entice finicky pelagic species that have already turned their nose up at other offerings.
The flat-sided jigs were developed with bottom fishing and a slower retrieve in mind. While the other jigs are most effective while being fished as close to vertically as possible, the flat-sided jigs can be worked at a greater angle from the boat.
My first ever Butterfly-Jig fish was a 30-pound striper that crushed a flat-sided jig 80 feet below the boat. I had been allowing the jig to hit bottom, retrieving it about 30 feet off the bottom and then putting the reel into freespool and starting the retrieve over. On the third pump of the rod after hitting bottom, it felt like my jig hit a brick wall, and the lightweight jigging rod doubled over as the fish bored for the bottom. At that point, I think I was more hooked on the Butterfly Jig than the fish was.