“That’s some pretty gnarly stuff down there,” Charlie Ingram said under his breath as he worked his jig-n-pig through the tangled branches of a submerged tree. He hopped the jig once when it reached open water, and instantly a fish sucked it in. The veteran Tennessee pro reacted with his trademark whip crack hook set, and his flipping stick bowed under the weight of a lunker bass. There was no swinging this fish into the boat —after it made several powerhouse runs, Ingram dropped to his knees, lipped it and hoisted it aboard. The big-bellied largemouth weighed a shade over 9 pounds.
Ingram was demonstrating the new Bass Grabber jig he designed for Snag Proof, the lure company most famous for its weedless frogs. It’s a bass jig with a monumental difference: it sports two big, bad hooks instead of the usual one.
BASS GRABBER BACKGROUND
Besides being one of the best jig fishermen on the planet, Ingram has to his credit eight Classic appearances and a total of four BASS tournament victories. Ingram is a professed tinkerer. During the many times I’ve shared a boat with him over the years, I’ve seen him assemble custom spinnerbaits and buzzbaits from boxes of components he keeps onboard his boat; glue pieces of tube baits or plastic worms together to come up with the perfect color combination; even create an entirely new genre of bass lures by sticking a feathered hook on a sliced-off section of a soft plastic jerkbait. But when he first showed me the prototype of his Bass Grabber jig, to say that I was skeptical is putting it mildly. With its menacing-looking twin upswept hooks, I was certain that Ingram’s latest foray into lure design was nothing more than a hang-up waiting to happen.