I really believe in shaking fish off in practice, especially on lakes I know. If you catch one there might only be one or two there. I think it’s a common mistake of tournament anglers. You always hear about guys having great practices and not doing well in the tournament, and I think that’s a reason why. At a new lake I will catch a couple to see how big they are, but even then I try not to catch too many and sometimes you can tell when they bite it what the size is.

My brother and I came up with the method I use now just playing around in the garage. We used to bend the hooks over or cut them off perfectly good jigs before. Sure enough, we’ve used it now for a couple of years with good results.

It’s just a piece of black tubing is all it is, and you can use different sizes depending on how thick the weedguard is (the one shown in the photo is actually a little undersized). Normally I get one that fits over the whole weedguard and put the whole guard in the tube and then slide it over the hook. It doesn’t affect the jig's action at all or hurt it and it makes it so you can’t accidentally hook one.