If you’re like me you trust that the companies who make fishing products, especially jigs, are looking out for our natural resources. It’s the company’s responsibility to make sure that the products they are using will keep our rivers, lakes, and oceans free of pollutants so that we will always be able to enjoy fishing and other aquatic sports.
Now, picture your favorite lake, river, or ocean devoid of life and useless for aquatic sports. Now, what if you found out that the cause of this catastrophe was from a lack of understanding of a metal that companies commonly use in jigs today? What if you found out that this metal was supposed to replace a much more toxic metal used in jigs?
The metal I am referring to is Tungsten.
Tungsten is derived from a Swedish word meaning heavy stone and is not found in nature as a solid metal. Tungsten is only found in element compounds like Wolfram and must be separated into a powder form. Tungsten has an extremely high melting point 6,150 degrees, the highest of all metals. That’s only 3,800 degrees less than the surface of the sun. Tungsten jigs are not 100% pure Tungsten, Nickle, Cobalt and other metals are added to the powder and melted to cause them to bind into an alloy. Any jig can contain anywhere from 70% to 93% Tungsten. Now, enough of the science talk.
Most of my friends use Tungsten jigs. I must admit I’ve used them as well. Everyone knows that Tungsten falls faster than lead and I guess that’s a good enough reason to keep using Tungsten. What most anglers do not know is that a Tungsten jig equal to the same size Lead jig will fall only .25 seconds faster than Lead at a 4foot drop. Tungsten will fall 1 second faster than Lead at a 15foot drop. That is not a huge difference as everyone makes it out to be. I was taught at a young age that the drop of a vertical jig presentation should be slow and natural and it has always worked well for me.
Let’s talk about the price of Tungsten. The average price of a 1/16 oz. Tungsten jig is around $3.00 apiece. The actual market cost of a 1/16 oz. Tungsten jig is $0.08. What this means to you and I is that companies are getting rich, very rich off us selling a product that is often 300 times what it is worth. Their savvy marketing strategies had lead us to believe that since Tungsten drops much faster than lead it must be bought.
Fact is the fishing industry is under attack from environmental groups looking to eliminate the use of Lead and companies have felt this pressure to find a safe substitute. Proclamations of a product being safer than another without the proper study is not only dangerous but is ignorant. Unfortunately, it has already happened with companies promoting products made with Tungsten and exaggerating it’s uses for huge profits.
It is widely known in the scientific world that the heavier the metal the more toxic it will be. Scientific test has been performed on rats to gather information on the health effects of Tungsten alloys on healthy tissue. The results were not only surprising but downright scary. During the experiment rats had Tungsten and Nickle pellets implanted in their muscle tissue. Within 20 weeks, tumors appeared. Rats that had higher doses given to them had tumors grow at such a rapid rate they showed up at 14 weeks instead of 20 weeks. The Tungsten caused cancerous tumors to spread throughout their bodies. This happened at such a fast rate the rats had to be euthanized. The same study of other heavy metal effects on rats such as depleted Uranium did not develop any tumors like their counterparts.
So where do we go from here? I think I made my case that Tungsten is NOT a safe alternative to lead and that companies did not do their homework before they started using the toxic material. Instead companies made over exaggerated claims that their products were made with 100% pure Tungsten and they fall at a much faster rate than Lead jigs of the same size. I have made a conscious decision to stop using Tungsten. I hope after you read this article you will take a good hard look at the jigs you use and make a conscious decision as well.
Resource-Outer Boundary Magazine, Spring 2014 issue, The Tungsten Truth by Steve Krueger
By Brian Koshenina, a Professional Guide http://muskiesandmore.com/, tournament fisherman, ODU Staff Writer, Certified Mentor, Volunteer, Pro Staffer for Hook Look Lures and Rods, Onyx, Snyder’s Lures, Striker Ice and HT Fishing.