Jigging rod length?

[KeepItReel]

I know this may just be a personal experience issue, but when jigging for grouper and other bottom species would most people prefer a 4'10" or 5'8" or something in between?
Thanks.

[Sea Draggin]

My crowd prefers a shorter rod for speed/japanese jigging and a longer 6' rod for yo-yo/bottom jigging.

[KeepItReel]

Thanks SeaDraggin. While I've got your attention, I'm getting ready to order some jigs from you. What jigs would you recommend for grouper from 80-200 feet. Will probably go with potroast color, is that called something else on the website?
Thanks.

[Sea Draggin]

Nope, thats what its called. Don't over look the pigroast either, both available in the Katana. I will have a special release of flat sides hopefully in 6 weeks. For deep water groupers and scamps, I'm more partial to blues, but that's just me.

A color that works great today, might not get touched the next. I put up a report called First Drop the other day. I can't tell you how many times I have switched colors and been nailed on the first drop of the new color. One day its pink, the next potroast, the next something else. That's why I developed that pigroast color. Its a little more silvery and squidy looking. Just something different.

[gman]

Sea Draggin is absolutely correct a longer rod will allow the jig to flutter down correctly while bouncing bottom. Shorter rods for speed jigging

[Dyllan]

Well I'm guessing my NEW Smith 52EX is only good for speed jigging? I can't wait to pop this new rods cherry on a fish........

[paul708]

caught tiles and grouper last year, used a 7' and 8' rod
i like a longer rod for bottom fishing.

[kilsong]

Well I'm guessing my NEW Smith 52EX is only good for speed jigging? I can't wait to pop this new rods cherry on a fish........

You can use it whatever you want. When you get tired while fast jigging, just move your rod up and down and you still get enough bites. I caught many bluefin with short jigging rods while moving up and down with my one hand last year.

Here are pictures of snowy grouper and pargo caught on jigs with short jigging rods by Reggie in Panama in January.

[gman]

Well I'm guessing my NEW Smith 52EX is only good for speed jigging?

UMMMM congrats bro you just bought one of the most bad ass rods out there. tight lines on it

[Caveman Sportfishing]

I am getting some new reels from Kil in the near future that are top of the line and looking for opinions on what length rods to get to match up to the reels. I need rods that will work well with charter customers that are relatively new to jigging but eager to learn more about it. Some prefer speed jigging and others Yo Yo and we mostly use all 7-10 oz jigs. If all my customers were advanced jigging anglers then I would look at very short powerful rods but in our case we have a mixed bag so I want to choose what rod lengths that will work best for our customers. I was thinking just under 6 feet but maybe it should be somewhat shorter. Most of our customers have tuna fished with us for years and have caught tuna up to 130 lbs plus on traditional heavier stand-up tackle and that includes using jigs especially the last few years. We also will jigging in the canyons at night for yellowfin if they show up this coming season and occasionally we do see a few in the 80-110 lb class but mostly somewhat smaller overall. Mostly we do inshore jigging for Bluefins during the summer months and they do get up over 125 lbs on a pretty regular basis. I realize most of the advanced jigging pros will have their own tackle but I want our charter customers to be able experience what fine quality jigging tackle is like. Too many have used heavier tackle in the past and get discouraged when they have to work to get a bite and give up on jigging way too quick and want to go back to chunking as fatigue sets in using the heavier around tackle and they lose interest in jigging. I know from experience very short powerful rods work great for stand-up fishing when strapped into a quality belt in the hands of experienced anglers but they beat up those that lack stand-up experience and they do much better with rods that are much longer and more parabolic. I am trying am trying to determine if this is true also when jigging.
Side Bar: I have discussed jigging with some of my customer base and so many have mentioned they get really confused when reading posts about jigging. PE 4,5,6,8 and all the common established equipment that is rated in ways they are not familiar with just leaves them frustrated and in some cases this confusion causes a few to lose interest in jigging. It works so much better when a post says this is for large bluefin over 100 lbs or nice size canyon yellowfin. It makes more sense to them when a post says this reel is rated for up to 22 lbs of drag and will handle tuna up to 80 lbs but if you are going to target bigger ones then this would not be a good choice. and possibly BLANK reels with additional drag capability plus line capacity might be a better choice. If you say GRAM (jig weight) and the PE Rating (line Rating) & Style it really does confuse them. I tell them to check out Glenn’s recent post and that should go a long way towards helping them understand all of this. Recently I have talked to a few customers that flat out do not believe a light weight rod under 5 feet will handle a 90-150 lb. tuna but I personally have seen it done and hope to let them see for themselves this coming summer. As jigging becomes more popular it does help when layman can read about new tackle in a manner they can understand and relate too. It is all good and I personally love reading more about the whole jigging world as do more and more of our customer base. Thank you