On Oct. 22, 2016, we spent five hours and 33 minutes watching Tommy Biffle of Wagoner, Oklahoma, employ his much heralded bottom-bugging tactics with a big soft-plastic creature bait affixed to a big swinging-head jig.
Since then, we have been pondering about how, when, and where Midwest Finesse anglers can adopt and modify Biffle’s power tactics and make them suitable to use with our spinning outfits and finesse tactics. During this spell, we have been searching for relatively small soft-plastic creature baits that we can affix to a small mushroom-style jig. And we recently crossed paths with Z-Man Fishing Products’ Boar HogZ.
As 2017 unfolds, we are hoping to spend a lot of time developing a Midwest Finesse version of Biffle’s bottom-bugging ways, and one of the soft-plastic baits that we will work with is the four-inch Boar HogZ.
Its tail is cylinder-shaped and a quarter of an inch long. Some anglers might call its tail the head, but in our eyes it is somewhat crayfish-like, and when we fish with a soft-plastic crayfish, we affix the hook of the mushroom-style jig into its tail.
Its torso is 1 3/4-inches long, and it is encircled with 27 delicate ribs. Four appendages radiate from each side of its torso. Three of the appendages are a half of an inch long, and they abstractly replicate the swimmerets that adorn the anatomy of a crayfish’s abdomen. The other appendage is about three-quarters of an inch long, and it is shaped somewhat like a pectoral fin of a small fish. These two fin-like appendages are situated along the side of the torso about a quarter of an inch from the junction of the Boar HogZ’s pointed and cone-shaped head.
The top and bottom of its head is embossed with 20 tiny pimple-like protrusions.
An abstract claw branches out from each side of its head. Each claw is curled. In its curled format, the claw is 1 1/2 inches long, and when it is uncurled and relatively strait, it becomes 2 3/4 inches long. The claws are thin and flat, and the top and bottom of each claw is engraved with a series of minute ribs.
If and when the claws are fully extended, the Boar HogZ becomes about 5 1/4 inches long.
Across the years that we have been describing the soft-plastic baits that Midwest finesse anglers have been using since the 1950s, we…
